


Tramps Like Us

by JustRamblinOn



Series: Rock and Roll, It Will Survive [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, I don't know when to quit, Kinda smutty but like my style, Morally Grey Characters, Motorcycles, Pining, Rock and Roll, Shane caught feelings and wants to talk about them aparently, Shane's Perspective, Springsteen, alcohol use, bit more than usual though, i still suck at this, poor Shane he has shit luck with the apocalypse ladies, reader was in Merle's motorcycle gang, so not super a lot, what is tagging?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-16 03:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19309675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustRamblinOn/pseuds/JustRamblinOn
Summary: Shane Walsh has a history of falling for people who don't fall for him back. Apparently the apocalypse didn't change that.He's blaming that damn Springsteen song.Sequel/companion to 'Once Bitten Twice Shy'





	1. Born to Run

**Author's Note:**

> Shane wouldn't shut up about Springsteen. So here you go.

There was a Springsteen song he'd known every goddamn line of back in high school, when life was all about girls and cars and sports and being Shane Walsh, the Cool Guy. It'd been the unofficial soundtrack of Shane's senior year, the song he'd put on every time he took a girl out parking or upstairs to his room when his mom and dad weren't home to cramp his style. He'd gotten laid to that song more times than he could count, and he'd considered it his lucky song.

To this day, anytime he heard the damn thing on the radio he ended up half-hard and didn't really know why. He was pretty sure it was when, if not why, he fell in love with her.

It wasn't like he intended to. For God's sake, he didn't even like her. Not really. Sure, when he'd noticed she was hot when he pulled her over. Any man said she wasn't, Shane would have automatically started looking to make sure the bastard still had a pulse, and Shane Walsh was a red-blooded American male in his prime, thank you very much. Even with his best friend in a coma, his best friend's wife holding it together for Carl by a goddamn thread, and all the shit he'd been hearing coming out of Atlanta, he'd noticed she was gorgeous.

Of course, he'd also noticed right away that she was hell on wheels, and further association certainly hadn't proven that assessment wrong. Not that Shane had ever objected to strong, trouble-making women- which is how he'd ended up screwing his 30 year old PE teacher senior year, even if the only person besides him and Mrs. Kelly who knew about that was Rick, and he didn't believe Shane was telling the goddamn truth. Almost made him want to find out if Mrs. Kelly had survived the outbreak, just to prove it once and for all. 'Course, she probably wouldn't want it getting around that she'd been sleeping with a student, which was fine.

Shane wasn't exactly the bring-him-home-to-meet-the-parents type. He was used to being some girl's dirty little secret, and most of the time he liked it that way.

The Nameless patch on her back didn't bother him any, aside from professional reasons, and her being trouble walking- or riding- definitely wasn't a problem. When she pulled off that helmet and ran her fingers through her hair, he considered letting her flirt her way out of the arrest he knew he'd end up making. He considered giving her a warning for the speeding and slipping her his number, telling her to look him up when his shift was over. They'd spend a few hours getting into some of that trouble together, then go their separate ways and Shane would never see her again.

But there was Rick in the coma, and all the other shit going on. Shane had had enough trouble on his plate right then, and he made a snap decision to not add any more to it.

He couldn't help but wonder if that had been the right choice or the wrong one. Maybe if they'd spent those hours in his apartment back home, he wouldn't be in as deep as he was now.

He'd booked her, and then the world had gone to fucking hell and to be honest, he hadn't spared her another thought. He'd run to the hospital and tried his damnedest to get Rick out of there, but Rick was dead. He was dead; Shane knew it. The only thing he could do for his brother then was get Lori and Carl out.

And he did. He got them out and got them safe, and other people with them. They made it out of Atlanta by the skin of their teeth and set up in the quarry, and they took in anyone else they found. When that Dixon asshole with his Nameless colors came, Shane still didn't think about her, because Merle kept him too goddamn busy to think about anyone else. He certainly didn't put her together with the little sister Daryl and Merle argued about all the fucking time.

He didn't think about her again until Glenn drove that screaming red thing up and she was smirking out at him from the front seat. Shane jerked when he saw her and remembered he'd left her in a holding cell in King County, and with an ease that had already started to gnaw at his soul, he'd shoved aside the guilt he'd felt.

The world ended, and she'd survived, didn't she?

Course, then she was swinging those damn hips as she walked up to him and socked him in the face. Looking back at it now, maybe that was the beginning of it all, though he didn't like to think so. He hoped it wasn't that fuckin' easy to get to him.

He thought that was the most shocking part of the day he'd have, but then he'd watched her walk away toward the van and the one person he knew with absolute certainty he'd never see again.

 

 

He couldn't fucking believe it when it turned out that not only was his best friend alive, but he'd come to Atlanta with the Nameless chick Shane had thought about fucking instead of booking, and that Nameless chick knew Daryl and Merle Dixon intimately.

When she got up the next morning and found him on watch trying to figure out just what the hell to do about the fact that he had been sleeping with his best friend's wife, he may have taken his bad mood out on her. Then she called him on sleeping with Lori, and he'd panicked. How the hell had she known that?

But she'd said she'd keep her mouth shut, and something in her eyes made him think she would. Her laugh when he'd said she was a loose cannon had sent every last drop of blood in his body to a place somewhere south of his brain, so maybe it'd been the laugh that did him in. 

 

 

Then again, maybe it had started when she came back from Atlanta the second time and they were cleaning up from that awful, brutal attack. Shane's hands had still been shaking with the sick fear and adrenaline from coming way too close to losing Lori and Carl in that shitstorm, and he'd been fighting with Rick over it already as they worked to clean up the camp. If Rick hadn't taken more than half their manpower to Atlanta, they wouldn't have been in danger to begin with. When Dixon started smarting off about it being what they deserved for leaving his trash asshole brother on a rooftop- which ok, even Shane knew that was a rough way to go; chained out and exposed to the elements, but it was Merle Dixon. Had Rick even met the man? Anyway, he'd glanced at her to see if she agreed with Daryl, because she'd been close with Merle too, apparently.

She'd been stripping out of her work gloves and had shucked her jacket with a look in her eyes that should not have turned him on the way it did as she called Daryl an asshole. She swung at Dixon the younger before he knew what was coming, and Shane had stood back to watch the fight with appreciation he knew he was probably going to hell for feeling.

He already knew the two of them were exes, but if he hadn't, that fight would have proven it. Only people who'd loved each other with everything they'd had could fight like that.

In his Jeep on the way to the C.D.C., she'd gotten him to open up. How the hell she had, he didn't know, but it was something about the lack of the judgement he'd expected. Shit, he judged him. His best friend hadn't been dead for two months when Shane'd started sleeping with his wife. Then it turned out Rick wasn't fucking dead at all, and Shane had not only abandoned him in the goddamn hospital to run off with Rick's family, but he'd tried to make that family his own.

It didn't matter that Shane loved Lori and Carl with every fiber of his being, and would have done the same even if he and Lori had never once looked at each other that way. It didn't matter that they had never once looked at each other like that before they both believed Rick was dead. Shane was still scum of the earth, and he knew it. Hell, Lori knew it too, and had told him as much.

He still remembered what she said when he'd told her that.

She'd offered a careless shrug, glancing at him with her hair blowing in the wind and one foot up on the seat she was curled in like a leather-clad cat. She'd waved one hand as she spoke, a gesture he didn't even think she was aware she made. "The way I see it? You're a victim of circumstances. She's made her choice. It sucks ass- believe me- and being around an ex you care about is more hell than this zombie apocalypse shit. But you aren't a bad guy. You tried your best to get him out- I believe that, Shane. You wouldn't have just left him. And you took care of his family. Bad guys don't do shit like that."

Bad guys don't do shit like that.

 

 

It wasn't long after that when it happened. They'd had themselves a little heart to heart looking for something to fix the damn RV- that thing was the thorn in Shane's side and the apple of Dale's eye- and she'd managed, somehow, to make him feel like he might not be a bad guy after all. She'd teased him, asking if he liked her now, and he'd had to shoot her down on that one. Truth was, he'd liked her style, her spunk, from the minute he'd laid eyes on her.

Wouldn't do to tell her that, though.

They were in the Jeep, getting close to the C.D.C, and they'd been riding in silence for awhile- the comfortable rather than the awkward kind. She had sunglasses over her eyes and both feet on his dashboard, and he'd thought about telling her to get those damn nasty combat boots off his Jeep. But what the hell was the point? There'd been dead and twice-dead bodies in his backseat at this point; the thing would never be the same again and he knew it.

He'd thought she was asleep until she turned to look at something as they passed it and he caught her sudden grin.

"The hell you smiling at, Nameless?" he asked, craning his neck to see what was back there.

She waved vaguely behind them. "Somebody'd tagged that billboard back there," she said with a grin. "Added a pretty great version of Springsteen's red bandanna to the back pocket of the jeans. Classic."

He'd laughed, sad that he'd missed it, and she'd laughed too. Then she'd thrown her hands up into the wind like they were on a roller coaster and started singing.

"Oh, baby, this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap- we gotta get out while we're young!"

She'd looked over at him and he'd been staring at her, and she'd actually blushed a little. "What? Don't tell me you don't know 'Born to Run'!"

He'd shaken his head, knowing damn well he was well and truly fucked now, and she'd crowed delightedly when he'd faced the road and started singing. "'Cause tramps like us-"

"Baby we were born to run!" She'd sung the last line with him, leaning toward him over the seat with a million-watt smile that didn't help the quicksand feeling one damn bit.


	2. Free Fallin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, ok, this got more smutty than I was expecting. 
> 
> Shane needed to get laid, apparently. 
> 
> smut  
> mentions of attempted, unwitting rape/non con (that Lori shit gets covered in this chapter)  
> mentions of masturbation

He wrote it off as lust and a reaction to that damn song, since he was still head over heels for Lori and there was shit that needed to be done. By the time he was half-drunk at the CDC and had been watching Lori and Rick snuggled up with each other all evening, he was pissed and tired and frustrated and in a shit mood, not that it was any surprise to him. He'd been frustrated, tired, and pissed since the world decided to end. 

A hot shower sounded like heaven, and finding the good doctor's Jack Daniel's was even better. Drunk showers were a specialty of his, after all. Rick often said it was a damn miracle Shane hadn't drowned himself yet.

Rick didn't know about that one time Shane nearly had, and Shane sure wasn't telling him. 

Then of course he ran into her in the hallway. Shane wondered absently if life smoked a cigarette after it fucked him or what. That dancing, mischievous look in her eyes when she asked if he was going to share any of the Jack went with him under the spray, and try as he might he couldn't quite banish her from his thoughts. 

He attempted taking care of the lingering, not-so-little problem that'd been driving him crazy off and on all day on his own, closing his eyes and bringing an image to his thoughts of Lori stretched out beneath him. He built the memory up in his mind's eye, bottle in one hand and taking sips from it as he added the details- the way Lori's skin felt under his hands, the contrast of her dark hair on the grass, the way her breath came in little fits and starts as they moved together.

But goddamn it, somewhere along the way Lori's eyes flashed and abruptly turned into that dancing I'm-gonna-cause-trouble look; Lori's lips curved in a knowing smirk that didn't look anything like Lori's smile; Lori's voice took on a sharp, teasing edge; and Lori whispering his name turned into another voice altogether, mockingly calling him 'officer' in that way that made Shane wonder if it was supposed to sound quite so dirty or not. Shane didn't know what the fuck had happened, but Lori suddenly and- despite his best efforts- irrevocably wasn't who was on his mind anymore. 

Fucking hell, he didn't even like that trouble making, tattooed, sarcastic, hot as fuck criminal. So why was she the only thing he could think about now, he wondered as he took another long drink. It wasn't like he wanted her like that. He didn't want to know what those eyes would look like glancing up at him, with his hand in her hair while she- 

Well, shit. Maybe he did. 

He turned off the water with a growl and got dressed while practically chugging from the bottle of Jack. 

 

 

He was still in a foul mood, angry and horny and completely confused, and that was the only explanation he could offer for the rec room. He saw Lori there, and she'd been being such a damn bitch to him, and he just wanted to talk. 

Then she started in on how bad of a person he was for telling her Rick was dead, and he got pissed. How could she not know he'd believed that? How could she think he'd lie to her about Rick, for fuck's sake? He missed her, and he just wanted, for a minute, to feel like she loved him the way he loved her. He wanted, just for a minute, to look in her eyes and see simple trust and acceptance, not judgement and condemnation. 

And he wasn't blaming Lori. He wasn't. He was a grown-ass man who knew better; drinking and fighting should never be mixed with sex. He damn well should have been better. 

It was just that- It was just that enough of their secret meetings had started with 'no, Shane, don't' but really meant 'yes, Shane, do' and he was just drunk enough to not be thinking entirely clearly; and he honestly, hand to God, didn't hear the difference in Lori's voice right away. He would swear on any god anyone wanted him to that he didn't hear the fear that edged her tone until it was too damn late.

Even as Lori cut long swatches down his neck with her nails, he flashed to a casual shrug and careless gesture, Nameless' serious voice saying "bad guys don't do shit like that." Well, if she knew about this moment right here, that'd all change, wouldn't it?

He staggered away from Lori as she stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, and Shane had never felt more fucking ashamed of himself, more like the bad guy Lori said he was, than he did in that moment. 

 

 

So of course, she was there when he slammed out of the room. Of course she stood in the hallway, feet bare and hair wet, in that goddamn skintight tank top and her omnipresent vest. Shane noticed in three motherfucking seconds that she wasn't wearing a fucking bra, she had damn muscular arms, and that silver key tattoo on her collarbone was sexy as hell. 

She twitched her eyebrow up at him as he stalked toward her, and in the back of his mind he wondered if she had anything else pierced. 

He was going to brush right on by her, but she started walking with him, steps matching his perfectly. He snarled out something at her, she called him Liberace, and somehow he found himself agreeing to share the rest of the Jack Daniel's he'd liberated from the doc. Apparently Shane had a goddamn death wish tonight, that was the only explanation. 

Though her face when he admitted to having had a devil's threesome before had been worth the monster hangover he was bound to have in the morning and worth the flashed mental image of her and him and whoever the fuck else she wanted that joined his shower musings to haunt him for the rest of goddamn eternity. 

Refusing her details might have been petty, but it was satisfying revenge against whatever spell she was weaving over him. The story was an interesting one, but anonymous hookups probably weren't the greatest thing in the world for an officer of the law to admit to. Oh, he'd made sure everyone was legal and everything was consensual, but still. He barely remembered- Amy? Allie? Amanda? Something with an A- the girl's face and had no idea about her boyfriend anymore. Boyfriend had wanted to experiment a little and treat his girl, and she'd been hot enough. Shane wasn't against men per se- though he wouldn't consider himself especially into them either- and shit. 

He'd been drunk. It'd been Vegas for a buddy's bachelor party. Rick hadn't been there to keep him out of trouble, what with Lori being way pregnant with Carl and all. 

Thinking of Lori pissed him off again and he took it out on the woman in front of him, indirectly accusing her of killing people. He'd wanted to kick himself at the flash of hurt in her eyes she couldn't really hide, but she'd forgiven him easy enough. Shane wished everything he did when he was pissed was that easily forgotten, and he might have sunk a little deeper in the damn quicksand right then. 

He probably could have still saved himself, though, if they hadn't kept going. If she hadn't made that crack about dancing in one of the Nameless' clubs, or if she hadn't gotten that open, vulnerable look for a couple of seconds when she talked about sleeping with exes and running into Daryl. Or maybe it was when that flash disappeared into a throaty groan at how long it'd been since she'd gotten laid. 

Shit, this girl was killing him, Shane thought. Her cavalier attitude toward sex, the careless way of moving she had, the way she handled her damn liquor- Shane was well on his way to truly toasted, and she seemed relaxed and loose but not sloppy. Of course, Shane had gotten a head start on her in the shower, but still. He thought absently as she looked at him archly and informed him that if he was doing it right, she didn't need to fake it, and if he wasn't, she'd let him know, that she was damn near perfect. 

Shit. Lori'd never say something like that. Lori'd never swig straight from a bottle and pass it over to him with a smile like that. She'd never ask if he'd found a friend's parent hot, and certainly wouldn't laugh in appreciation when he said yes and that one mom was the star of his dreams for awhile. Lori'd give him that faintly disapproving look Shane hadn't realized he'd been so damn used to getting from her. Lori'd roll her eyes and take the bottle from him for good, and Shane would be left feeling vaguely guilty. He'd be left wondering if he cleaned up his mouth and his act, would she still look at him like he was a bad damn influence on Rick or Carl, or would he manage to earn her approval for once? 

Shit, Lori was exhausting. Shane fired off a question about friends with benefits without really thinking about what he was saying, because being with Nameless was the most relaxed he'd been since Rick got shot and he'd just realized that. 

He turned the bottle in his hands and shot her a look after she said she didn't sleep with friends any more. Thing was, they weren't friends, were they? And thank God for that, he thought as he asked the next question before his brain talked his mouth out of it. 

"How about with people you tolerate?"

 

 

He saw the consideration in her eyes. Saw her pause and actually think about it, and hot damn if that wasn't almost as arousing as what came next. One minute she was actually pondering the implications and the future, then the next he had a lap full of sexy, warm criminal and he sure wasn't complaining. 

To the contrary, every bit of him was one hundred percent in agreement that this was the best damn thing that could have happened to him tonight, and the brush of her fingers on his bare chest as she grabbed his open shirt was electrifying. Shane wasn't sure there was blood left in his body anywhere but down south. 

She didn't seem to mind, so he didn't either, playing it cool and taking another sip as she flashed him that fucking smirk and made some smart-ass comment. His hand was moving of its own accord, sliding from her hip to her thigh and back again as she took the bottle from him. 

Jesus, she was trying to kill him, he decided as he studied the way she wrapped her lips around the bottle to take a drink, holding his eyes with hers. And she wanted to talk about rules. She asked if he was sober enough for this. 

Shit, Shane wasn't used to his women being this damn forward. Shane was the one who checked to make sure everyone was capable; everyone was clear on what was going on and just what it meant. Damn Nameless could have said anything right then and Shane would have agreed to it. She could have told him she was a member of a very religious cult that believed if you had sex with someone you were mated for life and he would be legally required to only be with her and raise weird religious babies, and he'd have agreed to it without hesitation if it meant they'd continue down the path they were currently speeding along. 

Thank God she didn't, he thought as he traced that intriguing little key. What was it for? Key to her heart? Naw, she was tough as nails and that was too damn sentimental. Well, it was hard to give a shit when she arched into his touch like that and he was given further proof he'd been right about the lack of bra thing. 

"One-time offer, unless we decide otherwise. No attachment. You don't have any hold over me just because we fuck, Officer. Hell, we don't even like each other that much, so we sure as shit aren't dating."

Dear Christ Almighty, Shane thought as he heard himself agreeing with a level of cool he most certainly didn't feel. She really was goddamn perfect. 

 

 

She issued a challenge, and that was something Shane Walsh had never been able to walk away from. 

"Let's see what you've got, Officer Walsh," she whispered. 

Oh, he'd show her. 

 

 

The difference, Shane mused when they were- finally- both completely spent, was so damn stark he could barely believe it. 

For example, Lori would have been gone by now. But Nameless- she was curled on her side, hair in a wild tangle over half her face, asleep on his arm with her leg tossed over him and his hand on her bare thigh. It wasn't cuddling, necessarily, but she sure wasn't in a rush to get dressed and get away from him. 

It was refreshing, he realized as he stared at the ceiling and tried to remember what breathing was like when it was done correctly. It was nice to spend a moment not feeling like he'd touched something he shouldn't have and left dirt on it. It was nice, even if it was only for this quiet minute while she slept it off, to feel like she wasn't ashamed of what they'd done. 

And sweet baby Jesus (though Shane was probably going to hell for thinking that in this context), there wasn't much they hadn't done, was there? The woman might have issued him a challenge, but she gave as good as she damn well got. 

Maybe, he thought with a grin, even better. Criminal had tested even his stamina, and Shane had what he considered a well-deserved reputation of being able to go all damn night. Shit, Shane hadn't felt this wrung out and truly satisfied in months.

He reached back behind his head and groped around until he found one of the cushions from the couch, sliding it beneath his head and shifting her a bit until she lay on it as well. Then he found his shirt- closest thing to a blanket he could retrieve without doing more walking that he was really capable of right then- and as she sighed and rolled to her other side, he tossed it over her. 

He laid back down with a muffled groan. It'd been a long fucking day, and had ended with more of a workout than he'd been expecting. He tossed his arm over her and fell asleep damn near instantly; probably the first time in his life he'd reached out to a woman in his bed for post-sex contact without her having initiated it.


	3. Take It Easy, Take It Easy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hint of smut  
> cannon typical violence

They went their separate ways the next morning with none of the awkwardness Shane had been expecting. In his experience, one night stands that you had to see again never really worked out well, and Shane had been braced and ready for her to slip out and not look him in the eye again. 

Especially when he thought about some of what they'd gotten up to. 

But no, she surprised him again. They'd been laughing within minutes of waking up, despite the headaches both of them had. She'd even flashed him a smirk, sitting beside him naked and completely unbothered by it, as she told him he could definitely keep up. Shane had taken his arm off his eyes and taken in the sight of her cautiously stretching, and he'd felt a little stir of guilt at the scratches he could see down her back and the very clear imprint of his teeth on the inside of her thigh.  
He was sure there'd be other marks, too, and the guilt swam harder until she'd turned that damn million-watt smile on him and winked. He'd had to laugh, even though it hurt, and he'd tossed a lazy compliment back at her that he didn't put much thought into. 

He'd been too busy wondering why it was she clearly didn't care about the evidence written on her body, since Lori would have killed him for leaving a mark anywhere, visible to others or not. 

Jesus, Nameless had another bite on her arm and a series of hickeys along her shoulder blade that would be in plain sight if she didn't put on that jacket or vest. Lori'd have skinned him alive. She was so set on no one knowing they were together like that, she'd have flipped royal shit if he'd lost control enough to bite or suck or scratch or grip her hard enough to bruise.

Of course, Lori wouldn't have done three quarters or more of what they'd gotten up to. Lori was predictable and tame, more interested in making love than in sex. That'd been fine with Shane, since he'd been craving that connection with another person as much as he'd been craving the getting off part. But it lacked the heat, the fire, the desperation and passion that he and Nameless had found with each other. Maybe it wasn't exactly fair to Lori to compare her- or what she and Shane had- to Nameless here, but Shane was. He was shifting through every moment he and Lori had been together and holding them up against the night he'd just had. All of it fell short, he realized. Even just the drinking and the fun before the sex had been marked by a level of enjoyment of each other he just didn't remember having with Lori. 

He'd asked her about the devil tattoo on her hip, ignoring the stab of sadness that came with knowing full well she was still hung all up on Dixon. Hell, he was still all hung up on Lori, if the way he was thinking about the two of them were any indication. 

He deliberately ignored the fact that Nameless here, who was currently insulting his wardrobe, housekeeping, and just him in general with the kind of playful ease that couldn't be faked, kept coming out on top in the comparison between her and Lori. Forgetting the mental image thinking of her on top brought to mind- her in his lap, tossing her head back and moaning his name- was a little more difficult, but he was hungover enough that it didn't pose any awkward problems for him. It brought a satisfied smirk to his face, since minutes before that she'd been telling him breathlessly she didn't think she could take any more and he'd told her in no uncertain terms that she damn well could and would. He'd been fucking right, hadn't he? Shit, the woman was something else.

They set his room to rights together, finding their clothes and pulling them on a piece at a time, and left the room together as well. She ducked into her own room, and Shane went to take himself another quick shower to maybe clear the vicious hangover up some. He'd been pretending it was less bad than it was, hoping to continue to keep up in her eyes. 

She didn't seem like she was damn well affected at all, damn her. That feeling that remained and maybe even grew worse when he walked into the dining hall and found her smiling at Glenn, arm resting on one drawn-up knee and a steaming mug in her hands. She laughed when he admitted to Rick that he felt like shit, and he scowled at her even as he collapsed beside her. 

Rick and the others started asking them questions that Shane dodged before she could, not really wanting to hear her cover up what they'd done just yet. His post-sex musings on shame and secrets lingered in the back of his mind, and it was just easier for him to take the lead than to hear her do it. He never even doubted that she would, Lori having ingrained hiding their sex so deeply that he never stopped to think she might be open about it. 

Whatever, it was probably better if Lori and Daryl didn't find out anyway. At least that's what he told himself. 

 

 

Being almost-killed by a motherfucking building wasn't exactly designed to make him less than murderous, and even if between her and Rick they'd kept the doctor alive and gotten them out of the first set of doors, here they were trapped against the glass of another pair. He was mentally furiously cursing Rick for bringing them to this death trap; cursing himself for not noticing it was one because he was too busy thinking with his dick like a horny teenager; and cursing the goddamn doctor for misleading them. 

Then she started laughing. It was the last damn straw, and he snarled at her. Dixon started to snarl back, and Shane would have gladly spent his last three minutes of life in a fistfight with Daryl goddamn Dixon, but she was pulling something from her pocket with the same pleased-with-herself expression she'd had the night before when he'd gripped her hair and pulled her off him seconds before he lost all control. 

He ignored the fact that the look in her eyes shot blood right below his belt again and focused on what she held in her confident grasp as she told everyone to get down. Crazy fucking criminal had a goddamn grenade, and Shane was busy shoving Carol and Lori and Sophia and Carl down and covering them as she pulled the pin and chucked it at the window. 

The blast lifted her off her feet as he watched, cursing vilely and hoping she wasn't hurt too badly; but they had to run, damn it. 

He made fucking sure she got back in his Jeep, though, and glanced at her bloody hand as he shoved her to the floorboards and tossed himself over her. The damn building was going to blow any second now, and she'd taken enough of a hit from the grenade. 

 

 

He ignored that protective urge, claiming he'd have done the same for any of them. Then he ignored the worry that gnawed at him until he got all the glass out of her hand and got her wrapped up, and he ignored the blast of sheer joy the grin on her face as she swung into the driver's seat of Merle's bike brought to him. He'd hopped into the RV and abandoned his Jeep with only the fainest of regrets, knowing the group needed to save on gas more than he needed the possibility of another Springsteen sing-along. 

He did not ignore the frantic signaling of Dale and Rick when the herd appeared, instead scanning the cars around him for any of their people. Glenn was right there beside him, and two cars away, ass up in a beaut of an old car she'd probably have been able to peg make, model, and year of in two seconds flat, was Nameless. She couldn't see Dale or Rick, and there was no time to lose, so he grabbed her by the hips and hauled her toward the truck Glenn was already sliding under. 

She'd opened her mouth to protest, but he'd shot her a look and she'd shut up and slid under the truck across from him and Glenn. Lori, he thought grimly as he slid in next to Glenn and covered the wide-eyed kid while she eased a Glock from one of the thigh holsters she wore on each leg, would never have shut up and trusted him like that. She held his eyes, watching for his signals without even knowing what the threat was until she saw the shuffling feet and heard the moans. He'd have had to muffle Lori and he'd have caught hell for it later, but Nameless? She maintained eye contact with the two of them and kept her cool, giving Glenn reassuring smiles and telling Shane with a look and a grim twist of her lips that if shit went down she'd have his back. 

 

 

Sophia was still missing, and Shane was being an asshole to Nameless because she happened to be in his path. Luckily, she didn't seem to give a shit, instead giving as good as she got. He'd taken one look at the worry on her face as she stared into the woods, knowing full well she was looking for Daryl as much as Sophia, and felt something uncomfortably like jealousy rear its ugly head. He'd snapped out something uncharitable about her intentions, and she'd skewered him with a look and put him in his place, right there in front of Glenn. 

"Don't get weird just 'cause we fucked," she declared bluntly, and the kid choked on nothing and looked between him and her wildly. 

He started stuttering something out even as Shane tried to fucking process that she'd just up and blurted that. Lori hadn't acknowledged their relationship once, to any other soul, including Rick, and here this crazy criminal was just blurting it out as though it didn't matter. As though it wasn't a secret or something to be ashamed of, and she didn't care who knew. 

Shane didn't know what to do with that, and he thought about it almost endlessly as he started working on a Hyundai he thought he could bring back to life. He had some half-formed bullshit plan to just fucking leave, since Lori was looking at him with such goddamn condemnation and Daryl hated his guts and Rick, his best fucking friend, was treating him like the loose cannon he'd called the Dixons. Hell, he thought as he shoved a hand through his hair, he was a loose fucking cannon. 

He thought about it as he stalked over to where she was flat on her back on the ground, laying on her jacket so her bare arms were shown off and the bite he'd left on one was still half-visible, if fading. She was doing something to the bike, her movements sure and competent and comfortable. 

Shane watched her for a minute, bottle of water in his hand, and wondered what it was about the way she moved that he liked looking at so much. Maybe it was the steady surety of each motion. Maybe it was the grace. Maybe it was the way she practically vibrated with self-confidence and self-assurance, as if there was no one and nothing on earth she'd rather be than so utterly herself. 

Shane had always been a sucker for confident women. In most people, people of the female persuasion especially, he could find the chinks in the armor right away- the places where that confidence wasn't so real; the places where they were faking it until they made it. So far, with her, the only place he'd seen a hint of that was when she talked about Daryl or Merle, or when her eyes filled with raw pain as they lingered on the younger Dixon brother. He ignored the way thinking about those chinks pissed him off, which was easy because she chose that moment to ask him if he wanted something or if he'd just come to stare. 

He answered with the first thing that came to his mind, a blurted question about why she'd told Glenn about them. 

He caught it, just barely- the flash in her eyes when she said she didn't do shame or secrecy with her sex. He felt something cold brush down his back, but he ignored it in favor of what he was trying to tell her right now. She brushed him off, repeating that she wouldn't keep it a secret and if he didn't want people to know about it, he shouldn't have done it. 

He was too busy trying to set that right with Lori's 'the more secret the better; in fact if the two of us don't even know about it that'd be the best thing' policy to do much more than wince when he found out Daryl already knew. No wonder the guy had been flat out ignoring him or glaring at him since they left the C.D.C. Not that that was very different from what he'd been like before, but still. 

When she stopped talking and went pale, he grabbed her elbow in concern. She was staring at a leather vest in her hands, with angel wings on the back, and there was the chink in that confidence. He put the wings together with the wings on her devil tattoo and pretended he didn't notice the spear of something dark that shot through him at the realization of how very much Daryl's she still was. 

 

 

He got another flash of that weakness, that vulnerability that was so odd against her typical confidence when she came busting out of the church they found, pale and with a tremble in the hand she ran over her hair. He'd fought with Lori outside the church moments before, and Andrea was looking at him like he was Satan himself come to walk the earth. 

He snapped at her about it, starting to walk away as he wondered what Lori would do now that two people knew her little secret. He didn't know when he'd started thinking of it as 'her' secret instead of 'their' secret, but he had. He wasn't going to be ashamed of them. He'd thought Rick was dead, damn it. He'd checked for a heartbeat for breathing, and found neither. They hadn't done anything wrong. Hasty and ill-considered maybe, but not wrong. 

Andrea didn't seem like the type to keep her mouth shut about it, not like Nameless, and Shane honestly couldn't bring himself to care. Especially since Lori had told him it was best if he just left. Well, maybe he would, and see how Lori fucking got on then. Maybe Rick could keep them safe, maybe not. Shane didn't give a fuck. 

Andrea was making a case to go with him, claiming they made a great third wheel for the group, and Shane was, oddly, considering it. She wasn't bad, even if she was a little full of herself- more confident in her skills that she deserved to be; brash and a little hot headed. Shane would be a hypocrite if he condemned her for that, though, cause hell- he was the same damn way. He opened his mouth to agree to take her when Nameless came busting out of the church and caught his eye. 

He watched her run the hand through her hair, saw that she was shaking. He caught the look in her eyes as she glanced at him and Andrea and turned away. She had fear filling them, plain and stark, and Shane didn't think he'd seen her scared of anything yet. Even certain death in the C.D.C. hadn't scared so much as annoyed her. 

Shane left Andrea standing there and was two steps in Nameless' direction before his brain caught up to his feet. Luckily, Rick and the others gathered at that moment and Rick started spouting some more bullshit about looking for Sophia. Shane started arguing, because that just seemed to be all he did with Rick since Rick came back from the fucking dead, and in the end the group split up. 

He wanted to keep an eye on Nameless, and he saw Daryl's lip curl when he asked if she was coming with him and Rick and Carl. He felt a little more smugly satisfied than he should have when she smiled and accepted his offer, her own eyes flicking once to Daryl and away again. 

Take that, Dixon, he thought rather uncharitably.


	4. Oh, Brother, Look What We've Become

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence

Shane had truly believed the most scared he'd ever be in his life was watching that bastard climb out of the back of the wreck, hearing the shot, and seeing Rick fall like it was slow-motion. He'd believed that the worst moment in his entire life would be either slapping his hands over the blood on Rick's side or watching Lori kneel to tell Carl that his dad had been shot.

Trying to get Rick out of that hospital had been bad. Watching Atlanta get bombed had been bad. Those moments had each come close, but they were still a thousand yards away from the bone-deep, heart-stopping, cold-and-nausea-inducing, pure terror of seeing Rick fall backwards. 

Then he'd watched Carl fall. 

 

 

Lori was a goddamn rock. Shane had thought it at the time, as he watched her in the hospital talking to the doctors; at home taking care of Carl; in the station talking to the sheriff. She was the unyielding wall against which the wave of fear and pain and chaos crashed and broke, and Shane had never admired her more than in those moments when her jaw set and her eyes tightened slightly and he knew without a doubt she was using all her self-control to keep centered for Carl. 

Later he would wonder if it was those moments that had led him to seek her out after the end of the world, when that tightness was all he saw in her face anymore, and try to crack that wall. If it was the grief filling him that made him want to test the strength of it and see what it looked like when she fell apart. 

He watched Rick struggle to figure out what to do; watched his friend crumbling beneath that same ocean tide of chaos and fear, and Shane reached deep within himself and did his best Lori impersonation. He didn't think he was succeeding, and when Rick started repeating how you looked for a little girl when she went missing for what felt like the thousandth time, he was two seconds from losing it and he knew it. 

It was Carl. Even with Rick he hadn't felt this wild and on edge. It was Carl. He was just a kid. Rick was Shane's best friend in the world, sure, but he was a grown man and a trained police officer who knew the risks of his line of work. Carl was a goddamn child who'd already survived more than he ever should have, and he'd just been looking at a deer for shit's sake. 

Shane looked wildly at Nameless on the other side of Rick, and he found not a wall for the tide to break on, immobile and unyielding, but something more like a boat or life preserver- a place where he could rest for just a moment and gather his strength before he rode out the tide. She didn't take away from the fear and the guilt and the pain, didn't shove them aside to be handled later, but he met her calm eyes as she started talking to Rick, and he knew he could take a breath and ground himself and deal with all those things while she kept them all afloat. 

He reached for that lifeline like the drowning man he was, and thanked every god he could think of in order and by name for her. 

 

 

It only got worse from there, and he reached for her again and again and she didn't let him down. She was there for him and she was there for Rick, and Shane knew somewhere deep inside that without her he'd have been drowned in the ocean alongside Rick. As it was, between the two of them, they were keeping Rick going- and frankly, to Shane, that was all that mattered. Shane himself didn't matter as long as Rick stayed steady so he could be there for Carl.

When he'd heard what all the doctor needed, he'd been ready to heave, knowing full well Carl would die now and there was nothing he could do about it. He didn't know what half that shit was, much less where to find it. 

But then there'd been her. She asked where she could find all that, Otis answered, and she nodded, spun on one heel, and headed toward the door like she was going to the grocery store to grab some fucking milk or something. 

Shane was going with her. 

 

 

He had one brief moment of giddy relief where he thought it was all going to work. Shane saw the smiles on Otis' and Nameless' faces, heard them say they had it all, and for one shining moment, they were in the clear. For the first time in too damn long, life wasn't going to totally fuck over Shane Walsh and anyone he happened to give a shit about. 

Then he threw open the door and there were the walkers, and she was shoving him to the side and snapping at him to run. 

Somewhere in the bowels of the school, after enough hallways that Shane was fucking lost and didn't want a damn thing to do with high school ever again, he heard her mutter something softly that sounded a lot like 'it's a death trap; it's a suicide rap.' Shit if that didn't make him start laughing right then and there. 

Or it would have, if he'd had any goddamn oxygen to laugh with. He turned to her with a smirk and had already started speaking when the fresh wave coming up the side had him cutting off with a snarl. 

"Baby, we were born to- goddamn it, run!" 

 

 

She cracked jokes and covered their asses and generally kept him going when he would have quit because what was the point anymore? His ankle was fucked, Otis was on his last legs, and there was no damn way they were getting out of here. Even if they did, would Carl still be alive? They'd been gone way too long. 

And if Carl didn't make it, Shane wouldn't just leave the group. He'd drive himself into the arms of the nearest collection of these undead assholes and ring the dinner bell for them. No way would he live with the condemnation in Lori's eyes if her son died while he was supposed to be watching him. No way would he live with that ghost of his friend he'd driven away from. He couldn't do it. 

He wasn't sure when the plan took shape in his mind, but it did. She had two out of three packs, and Otis had the other. He'd stay behind, she and Otis would run ahead and he'd hold them off as long as he could. 

Carl had to live. 

Of course she refused, but when he took the gun from her and told her to run, she screamed at him. But she went. 

Shane had known she would. He'd seen it in her eyes as she looked from Otis to that window. He'd seen it in the shift in her tone from joking to grim. He'd heard it in her voice all the way back at Hershel's farm- "I've hurt some people, fixed some people, buried some people we couldn't fix." 

Yeah, she'd get the job done. He trusted her to at least get the hell out of here with the supplies she had, even if she couldn't save him. 

He turned to Otis. "Get after her, man. You've got the other bag." 

"No," Otis refused, reaching for Shane to support him. "We go together. She'll be back for us, right?"

"Right," Shane grunted, knowing there wasn't time to argue, but he was already thinking about the odds. There was no way. 

Otis was slow. He was overweight and exhausted from everything they'd done already. He was gasping like he couldn't get oxygen to his lungs, and Shane knew he couldn't carry the bag and support Shane himself. 

Something had to give. 

Only one of them was making it out of there alive. 

 

 

Shane never could understand what happened next, really. Any time he tried to think about it too hard there'd be gaps- big, important gaps- missing. 

He realized only one of them was going to make it out. Sometime on the heels of that thought came one much darker, that he tried damn hard to ignore. Somewhere in the depths of his soul came the whisper, if only one of you is making it out, it damn well needs to be you. 

At first he fought against it. His oath was to serve and protect, right? And Otis was a decent man, for all that he'd shot Carl. He was here now, trying to pay that debt. 

The thing was, Shane was fighting a losing battle either way. If he didn't leave Otis behind or find some other way to slow the goddamn dead down, both of them would be eaten. And this was where Shane's memory went fuzzy and disjointed, because he never could be sure what he'd done and what he'd imagine he'd done. 

Sometimes when he thought about it, Otis tripped. He stumbled and went to one knee, and Shane wrestled the pack from the man's back and hobbled off alone. 

Sometimes Shane pushed Otis down. 

Sometimes Otis took off the pack on his own and threw himself into the oncoming walkers of his own accord. Shane knew that version was bullshit, but it often presented itself all the same. 

Sometimes Shane shot Otis in the leg or the shoulder or the stomach. 

Sometimes Shane shot Otis in the head. 

He truly didn't know, and that more than anything else was what plagued him. It wasn't that he'd left the man behind to save Carl, though it didn't exactly fill him with joy and delight that he could do such a thing under any circumstances. It was that he didn't know what he had done. He couldn't tell just how bad of a guy he actually was. 

Bad guys don't do shit like that. Well, apparently bad guys did try their hardest to save the ones they loved and fuck everyone else, because Shane Walsh knew deep inside that he was a bad guy. 

But maybe that was ok, he decided in the truck with her as she shot him a look and asked about Otis. Maybe a bad guy was the only kind who could survive in this world. Look at her, after all. She bluntly asked him if he'd killed Otis. Asked him if he'd murdered a man, and when he'd snapped 'no'- even if it wasn't really the truth; wasn't entirely accurate- she'd nodded. 

"Carl's going to live," she said firmly, and Shane knew she got it. She got it. 

Tramps like us, he thought grimly. Baby we were born to run. 

 

 

Time stayed disjointed for him. After those first clear moments with her, the silent ride back was a blur. He remembered, in a broken kind of way, getting back and hauling out the packs for Rick. He remembered looking into his brother's blue eyes and asking, and Rick assuring him there was still a chance. 

He remembered Nameless stepping over and letting him lean on her, remembered the flash of concern in her eyes as she looked at him.

He knew he said something to Rick and the others about Otis, a few lines about Otis sacrificing himself that had Rick nodding along and saying something in agreement. He caught the wary look in her eyes at his side, a long consideration that said she knew something was up and he was lying. 

But she didn't say anything. Just helped him hobble into the house, and somehow he ended up in the bathroom, with the shower running and staring into the mirror at his own blank eyes. 

As steam filled the room, he tried for the first time to put together what had actually happened. He couldn't. He knew it was wrong, but there in the bathroom all he could see when he looked through his memories was the bullshit he'd told Rick about Otis staying back. 

He had a chunk missing from his hair, which was part of how he knew that story was wrong. He went looking through the bathroom until he found clippers and shaved the rest of it off, and when he looked in the mirror again, he didn't recognize the person he saw staring back at him with blank eyes and no hair. Who the hell was he? 

He'd left a man to die at best; murdered a man at worst. 

 

 

He dressed in the dead man's clothes and went out to the porch to get some air. He couldn't stay in that house, not with Maggie and Beth and Patricia weeping for the man whose clothes currently hung off him like weights, heavier than overalls and flannel ever should have been. 

He was lost as he stared at the darkness out there and wondered about the darkness inside his head. He didn't know how long he stood there, how long it had been since they'd gotten back. People had been talking to him as he wandered out of the bathroom and through the house, but it was as if their voices were distorted and far away. He responded, and apparently did well enough to keep suspicions at bay, but he couldn't have told a soul what they said or what he did. 

And then there was her voice. 

She said something to him, and he didn't know what she'd said then either. It didn't matter what it was, he supposed, because it was just her voice that did it. It was the first clear thing he'd heard. 

He remembered staring at her as she said she'd done all sorts of shit he would have locked her up for before the world ended and he'd left a man to die. He was hardly in position to judge her now, and he didn't think he was. He stared at her instead, the serious look in her eyes and the set to her lips that told him she meant every word she was saying. The lack of anything resembling judgement on her face, like in the Jeep when they'd talked about him and Lori, soothed something deep inside him. More than anything else, it was that lack of judgement that reached him. 

"I'm wearing a dead man's clothes and you're telling me you've done all that shit. I should hate you. You're against everything I've stood for all my life," he told her, wondering why the fuck he didn't. Why the fuck she didn't look at him and see the evil he saw in that damn bathroom mirror. 

She shrugged at him, that hypnotic confidence radiating from the movement. "You can hate me if it makes it easier. I don't mind. Offers still stand." 

And she meant it. That was the wonder of it. She meant it. She didn't care if he hated her; she was there for him. To talk if he wanted, or to sit quietly and look at the stars if he wanted. She was there.

Instead of looking at the stars, he looked at her.


	5. And Her Memory Is All That Is Left For You Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of past attempted rape/non con

He saw the way Daryl eyed him during the funeral. Shane didn't want to speak for Otis; didn't want to have to spin some bullshit lies about his final moments and his last words. He didn't know what was real and what wasn't, but he did know whatever he said wouldn't be the truth. 

He couldn't tell these people that he'd left Otis behind to save Carl. They wouldn't understand. No one here would understand that except her, so what the hell was he supposed to- 

Her hand slid into his and she started to speak as he latched onto her. She stayed like that, holding his hand, as he managed to tell them something about Otis. He limped toward the rock pile and she came with him, keeping him steady when he almost fell. 

He wondered if she had any idea that she was the only thing keeping him steady in a bunch of other ways as well. 

As he made his way back to his spot in the circle, his arm around her shoulders, he caught the way Daryl looked at her and at Shane. Shane knew; he just didn't give a good damn. He needed her right now, and Dixon had tossed her aside years ago. 

Redneck asshole could suck Shane's dick for all Shane cared. Daryl might have loved her; she might have loved him- but Dixon didn't have any claim over her right now. It was his own damn fault, too. He had a problem with it, he could just try to get her back. 

 

 

When Daryl and Nameless went out looking for Sophia, Shane had the damn feeling Dixon was trying just that. Daryl wanted his girl back, and shit- Shane didn't blame him. He saw the way they looked at each other, and Shane knew damn well they were just as head over heels as they'd ever been. He shoved down the possessive anger that arose as he watched them walk away together. 

He didn't want her, not like that. Shit, he didn't even like her much. Dixon was welcome to her. 

He'd just been a little fucked up, that was all. With Carl getting shot and the shit with Otis- Hell, his head just hadn't been clear, and she'd been there to listen and understand. That was it. Nothing more to it than that. 

Really. 

 

 

Convincing himself was easy enough when he went to see Carl and found Lori at the boy's side. 

"Sorry," he muttered, turning to leave with his eyes fixed on the floor. Lori'd made it clear how she felt about him after the C.D.C. She didn't want him near her or Carl, and Shane almost couldn't blame her. 

He'd just had to see if Carl was alright, though. 

"Stay," Lori said softly, holding out a hand to him. 

He froze, staring at her. "What?" 

"Stay. Please. Here, right now, and- and with us. Don't go," she repeated, eyes pleading. 

He ran his hand over his head, rubbing at the stubble that was left of his hair. She couldn't mean that, could she? It was just relief; a reaction to Carl being alive.   
But- 

But Shane didn't really want to go, he realized. He never had. He'd wanted to be free of Lori's judgement and Rick's distrust and the weight off all the responsibility for keeping these people alive. But he didn't want to go. 

He wanted to watch Rick's back; to see Carl grow up; to find Sophia. He wanted to keep Lori safe and trade more insults with Nameless. He wanted to know if she and Daryl were going to get over themselves and whatever had happened between them years ago and get together. He wanted to make sure the hard decisions got made and carried out, so he never had to wonder if there was something else he could have done to keep them all alive.

"You mean it?" he asked, voice raw.

Lori's eyes filled and she nodded, swallowing hard. "I'm sure," she said, and Shane knew he wasn't going anywhere. 

 

 

Between Lori, Nameless, Otis, and Rick, Shane felt like he was loosing his goddamn mind. He spun wildly between moods and lashed out at everyone, and he knew it. Rick was always up for a fight and Lori made a good fucking target for his anger as she flipped from telling him to stay to treating him like goddamn shit, but it was Nameless who kept catching the edge of his temper and his bullshit. 

He'd lash out at her because she was there, and she'd raise that damn eyebrow with the silver stud in it and give him hell right back. 

He didn't question how fucking twisted it was that it kept him coming back for more, because he was too busy trying to act like he wasn't up to his shoulders and sinking fast into quicksand when it came to her. 

 

 

When they were in the woods and Rick started talking high school romance, Shane had been surprised. When Nameless had joined the teasing and told Rick they'd slept together, Shane had been damn near floored. 

She was so fucking open, it killed him. Cuttin' up with her and Rick reminded him how he and Rick used to be, back before. When Shane would talk about his dating life and Rick would bitch to him about Lori, and they were fucking friends. Back before everything was secrets and shame and Shane always vaguely guilty every moment of every day. 

He loved the way she owned what had happened between them, not denying it or that it'd been good. He loved the way she grinned and said he could talk to Rick about it if he wanted, so confident and unashamed. He loved the way she knew how goddamn good she was, telling him with a wink she'd had him begging for mercy. 

Jesus, this woman, he found himself thinking as he watched her laugh until she couldn't breath in the sunlight. Who the fuck was she and where had she been all his life? 

Then the smile was gone from her face and every ounce of joy was sucked from him as that fear he'd seen outside the church moved through her eyes when he joked about her high school escapades. Shane felt a rage blacker than anything he'd ever known creep up at the way her eyes shut down and her voice shifted to carefully blank despite the careless shrug and the ease with which she talked about the shit she'd been through. 

Rick steered the conversation away after she met Shane's eyes and told him what happened two weeks and four days after her sixteenth birthday. Shane was grateful, because he was two seconds away from driving to whatever bumfuck Georgian town she'd lived in and looking for the bastard himself. 

Maybe he'd get Dixon to help. 

 

 

He had some half-formed plan to do just that when he got back to camp, but he didn't find Daryl anywhere. He found Lori instead, and she gave him shit over whatever had crawled up her ass today. 

It was odd, Shane thought as he looked into her eyes. He loved this woman who was currently quietly and viciously bitching him out about something. He really did. 

But he hated her a little too. 

Shane had never been ashamed of who he was or the things he did until she convinced him to keep their relationship a secret. He'd have confessed it to Rick himself the day Rick came back from the dead, because Shane didn't believe they'd done something wrong. 

Shane had known Rick was dead. Lori had been, in his mind, a widow. They'd been looking for comfort. But Lori had caught his eye and shot him a hot glare and that had been it. She'd convinced him not to later, in the same hushed and vicious tone she was using now. Shane didn't get why, but he did know that he would be well and truly fucked over if he told Rick now or if Rick found out some other way, and Shane only had himself and Lori to blame. 

He didn't understand how it was that Lori always managed to manipulate him into feeling like a piece of shit, but it'd been going on for so long, he almost didn't question it anymore. He might not have ever questioned it, he realized in a moment of clarity, if it hadn't been for a certain reckless criminal who'd looked at him with steady, non judgmental eyes, and told him he wasn't a bad guy. 

Even if she was wrong about that, because he damn well was a bad guy now, it wasn't because of his feelings for Lori. 

 

 

He was still stuck on that, on how Lori made him all tangled up inside, when Andrea screamed about walkers and he ran out into the field with Rick. He gritted his teeth as he ran on his still sore ankle, and when he saw Nameless and Daryl his heart stopped. 

No way they were both- 

"Damn it, Shane!" her voice came, and the rush of relief slammed into him and pissed him off. 

He ended up more pissed off when Carol came down from taking Dixon a tray and told everyone cheerfully that Nameless and Dixon were looking downright cozy together up there. He took watch on the RV that night, waiting for her to come out of the house and head down to bed, but she never did. 

Shane found himself thinking about the bare bones of the story she'd told him and Rick in the woods, about how it ended with Dixon kicking her foster dad's ass and running away with her to Atlanta join up with Merle. She hadn't gone into details, but he'd seen the look in her eyes. They'd shifted from blank to soft, and her lips, which had been set in a firm line, had turned up almost imperceptibly. 

Shane knew the look of someone still very much in love. He'd slept with a few women who had that look when they talked about why they were in that bar that night. It never ended very well for him. 

Shane hoped she was happy now, if she and Dixon had gotten back together like he thought maybe they had. He hoped they were happy, and he wasn't at all jealous. 

Why would he be?


	6. When It's Over, So They Say, It'll Rain A Sunny Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smuttiness  
> Lori being a bitch

He fucked Andrea when she offered. 

Shit, it wasn't that she offered so much as she reached over and grabbed his dick, and Shane was just pissed and frustrated enough to say whatever. Bring it on, then. 

It wasn't like he hadn't known she'd been coming onto him before. And it wasn't like he hadn't been flirting back, more out of habit than anything else. When Andrea'd looked at him archly during the first round of gun practice and asked if something had changed his mind about leaving them, he knew she meant her. 

Wasn't his fault she didn't see the way he couldn't help but look over at Nameless, standing there just behind Carl and high fiving the kid when he hit his target. 

Shit. 

Then Andrea'd stayed behind with him for what Rick had jokingly called the advanced class, and Shane had been an asshole. He saw that; knew it as soon as the comment about her sister had slipped from his mouth. 

Rick had put a lot of trust in Shane, to teach these people. Shane knew from the way Rick held his eyes while talking to Lori about Carl that Rick had meant the olive branch he'd offered by saying Shane was one of the best instructors he knew. Shane was good at this shit, damn it. He usually figured out what motivated a person to learn to shoot, what motivated them to learn to do better at any given task so they'd get better at this particular one. 

With Andrea, his heart wasn't in it. He was distracted by his shitty mood and the way Nameless had looked at him when he'd said he needed suggestions for a partner for this run he was doing today. He'd seen the brief confusion in her eyes; knew she'd wondered why he wasn't asking her along. 

So he apologized to Andrea after she- rightfully- stalked off. He convinced her to get in the car with him and do the sweep, be his backup. He saw the little shift in the way Andrea looked at him and wondered if he was fucking up again. 

But he did need the backup. And then when shit went south, like it usually did on Shane, Andrea figured out how to shoot worth a damn. Shane considered that a goddamn win, man. 

He tried to ignore the fact that his first thought on seeing burned bodies was Nameless' face saying she'd burned a few people she couldn't save. He tried to ignore the fact that as soon as he saw the feet and heard the groans, he wished she was at his damn back instead of Andrea. 

That bullshit was enough to put him in a mood almost as foul as he'd been in that night at the C.D.C., and when Andrea went from staring out the window to grabbing his dick, what the hell was he supposed to do? He wasn't a goddamn monk. 

Lori didn't want him anymore. Nameless was a one-time deal, no matter how much he was regretting that stipulation these days. Here was a warm body offering, and Shane- 

Shit. Shane was willing to close his eyes as she climbed in his lap and pretend she was someone else. Someone who'd lock eyes with him and ask about the rules and if he was sure, whereas Andrea reached first and just lifted an eyebrow at him until he'd hit the brakes and pulled her into his lap. Nothing resembling actual goddamn communication going on there, but the point came across just damn fine, he supposed. 

Shane knew it wasn't gonna be good for either of them, in the long run, but the long run had never interested Shane all that much. He needed something and she was offering it, and who gave a shit if he pretended the ribs he pressed his lips to had a rose tattoo on them? Who cared if he pretended the hands sliding to his belt had bruises and scrapes and usually some grease from a goddamn engine on them? Who did it fucking hurt if when he groaned in release, he bit back a name that didn't belong the woman he was buried inside? 

Far as Shane could tell, it didn't hurt anybody but him. And he was fuckin' used to it. 

 

 

Fighting with Dale after they got back didn't bother him any. The guilt he felt when Andrea kept stealing little glances his way, glances that told Dale and Carol what they'd been up to out there, did. He was tired of every woman he was with making him feel goddamn guilty for something. 

It was easy to lash out at Dale when Dale was telling him to leave. Especially since Shane knew he wasn't going anywhere. He didn't even give a shit when Dale mentioned Otis, but he did it in the same breath as Nameless, and that- that was what had Shane glaring him down and turning to walk away. 

When the old man brought up the one time, the one time, Shane had drawn on Rick in the woods, Shane felt another flash of that guilt he was so damn tired of feeling. 

"I know what kind of man you are," Dale said with a sneer. 

Bad guys don't do shit like that. 

Fuck Dale. Fuck Dale, and Lori, and Rick, and the rest of them. Fuck Dixon with his knowing look whenever Shane was near Nameless. Fuck all of them, except her. Looking at him with so much judgement for a weak moment; for not knowing everything; for getting things wrong. They didn't know him. They didn't know what kind of goddamn man he was. 

But if that's what Dale thought, Shane would let him think it. Far be it from him to try to prove the man wrong. In fact, Shane decided, why the hell not let him see what he was dealing with? 

Shane let the rage and the darkness he kept trying to keep a goddamn lid on show through his eyes as he spoke, and he knew Dale saw it. So when Dale repeated that he believed Shane would just gun down Rick- Rick Grimes, Shane's best goddamn friend in the whole fucking world- Shane dropped his voice to whisper. 

"Well, maybe we ought to just think that through. Say I'm the kind of man who'd gun down his own best friend, what do you think I'd do to some guy that I don't even like when he starts throwing accusations my way? What do you think?"

Dale didn't have a response to that, so Shane walked off, and of course, she'd heard every word. The one person he actually gave a shit about right then; the one person who never judged him, was calling his name with a wary reserve he'd never heard from her before. Shane turned with a glare to see her leaning against the open hood of one of Hershel's cars, and what came from her as she scrubbed uselessly at engine grease on her fingers wasn't what he'd expected. 

"You fuck Andrea?" she asked, and he hesitated. 

He genuinely, for a moment, wasn't sure how to answer that. Because no. No, he hadn't. Not really. He'd been fucking her again, in his mind, but that answer wouldn't do him any favors with anyone. Hell, it didn't even do him any favors with himself, because he might have been a bit of a man-slut, sure. He'd own that. But he wasn't the type who just used women like he'd just used Andrea. Guilt had a habit of making him an asshole, and Nameless had a habit of not giving a fuck, and that didn't change when he lashed out in response to that sickening thought. 

She shrugged and told him she didn't give a shit who he screwed. He was all set to snap something back when she added a soft look and asked if he still tolerated her. 

Goddamn it, Shane thought as he ran his hand over his hair. How the fuck did she always manage to say the right thing to put him in his place without leaving him feeling like he'd been a bastard? Which, of course, always made him realize he'd been a bastard on his own. Sneaky, that's what she was. Damn sneaky. 

She kept it up when she changed the topic on him abruptly enough to make his head spin, not asking about Andrea again but about him drawing on Rick. He got pissed all over again, bracing himself for the same holier-than-thou attitude he saw on every other face, but he didn't see it in hers. She stepped closer, and when he got in her space like the dick he could be, she didn't back down. 

"You're coming a little unraveled, Shane. I did too, the first time I had to cover up some deaths. It was overdoses, and Merle was high as kite and almost impossible to handle. Almost, because I could always seem to manage him, somehow. So they called me in. I got a little messy in the process, and after? I fell completely apart. I don't blame you for anything that happened that night. Shit, Officer. You could have shot him and kicked his corpse to the zombies and I would keep your secret with no judgement. Because we saved a little boy. And because I'm just a stone cold bitch like that sometimes," she said instead, serious expression never wavering.

He was hooked, because damn. How could he not be? It made it matter all the more when she told him that if she needed to be watching Rick's ass, she needed to know. She didn't say it like she thought she did. She didn't say it like she thought he was a monster. She simply said it like it was a fact: if she needed to, she would, and she was asking him point-blank if she did. Asking him what kind of man he wanted to be.

"Rick ain't in danger of anything from me but a broken nose, girl," he told her, and that was it. She nodded and moved right back into teasing him about fucking Andrea, finally walking away with a swing of her hips and her middle finger raised at him in response to his parting shot. 

 

 

Then there were goddamn walkers in the motherfucking barn, and Rick wanted to do nothing. He wouldn't leave or clear the thing out or give them their guns back, and Shane just snapped. He started yelling at everyone, and when she put herself in the path like usual, jumping to Dixon's defense, he snapped at Nameless too. It was getting to be a damn habit, him lashing out and finding her as a target, and he hoped to hell he broke it soon. 

He hoped to hell a lot of things broke soon, if he was being honest. He was just afraid one of them might be him, in a way even she couldn't pull him back from. 

Later, he checked out the barn again for safety, already trying to figure out how to apologize to her yet again. Like she'd heard him telepathically, she made some sort of smart-ass comment and he turned to find her sitting there with her back against a wheelbarrow where she could watch the damn barn. 

She had that fucking face and body; she thought like him; and other people's tempers rolled right off her back like water off a duck. It was no wonder he was wrapped around her fingers so tight he wasn't sure where he ended and she began. 

"Maybe the leather clad biker bitch can help," she offered with a quirk of that damn eyebrow, and he snorted. He knew how that little stud tasted, having been unable to resist running his tongue over it and biting down gently during that night in the C.D.C. He shook that little flash from his mind with difficulty, focusing on what she'd been saying to him.

"Don't even try to tell me you're insulted by that," he shot back, and that million-watt smile that had him thinking of Springsteen and the heat of her skin against his lit up her face. 

"Nope," she said with a shrug. 

He ended up talking to her. They covered everything that was making him lose his damn mind, except her. He wasn't ready to talk to her about what she did to him. Not yet. 

Talking to her was nice, and having her there to mediate when Rick came out of the house and that black tide of rage started rising in him again helped to. 

Then Rick dropped the bomb that Lori was pregnant, and looked at Shane like he did, and Shane knew that he knew. Lori had told him about them, and Shane had zero doubt, from the way Rick was looking at him now, that Lori had made him the bad guy. 

Damn her. Goddamn Lori and her secret keeping and manipulation and shaming. That baby was his, and Shane knew it and Rick knew it and Lori knew it. Shane also knew in a glance that Rick and Lori would lock him out and keep him from his baby, if Lori had her way. 

What the hell was he going to do? What- he had to talk to Lori. 

He turned wild eyes to Nameless when she said his name, and he said something to her. Something. She was looking at him all concerned and she was asking him not to be stupid and he knew she was right. He had to keep it together for this to have a chance of not ending in disaster. 

He didn't think he could do that, though, since he was coming apart at the seams and- 

She hugged him, and he clung to her until he could think again. 

 

 

"Lori," he called desperately as he walked up to where she was sitting and knelt in front of her. 

She glared at him. "No, Shane. Just no." 

"That baby's mine." He kept control as best he could, knowing this was the moment his entire future hinged on. He held her eyes and tried to tell her that he didn't want anything from her but this; this acknowledgement. 

She shook her head in denial, already refusing him any part of what was his. 

Why? he wondered. Why was she like this? He didn't understand what he'd done that was so wrong to her. He'd believed Rick was dead. He'd believed that, damn it. He never would have left him otherwise. Why didn't she see that? 

"Lori. Please. Look, I know you don't love me, ok? I know that. I love you; what I feel for you is real, but I get that you don't feel the same way. I can live with that. But we both know the baby's mine, Lor," he tried again, reaching for her hands. 

She pulled back and glared at him. "You're right. I don't love you. It wasn't anything real, Shane. Not for me and it certainly isn't for you. I wanted to be close to him again, and you- you were the best I could do," she hissed. 

He tried not to let that hurt. He'd known it, damn it. He'd known it the first time she'd given him that long, lingering look, and he'd run his fingers down her cheek. He'd known it the first time she'd reached for his hand and he'd held on back and she'd stared at their joined hands before walking away with tears on her cheek. 

He'd known the first time they'd kissed, when he'd wiped more tears from her eyes in the dark outside her and Carl's tent and whispered that everything would be ok. That he'd make sure she and Carl were ok, no matter what. She'd leaned into his hand and kissed his palm, then frozen and looked at him as he looked at her. She'd leaned toward him, just a little, and he'd been drawn to her slightly parted lips like a magnet. She'd pulled away just enough for him to start to curse himself for an idiot, and then she'd wrapped her arms around him and kissed him again as she cried. 

Shane wasn't the blind fool he convinced himself he was so much of the time. He knew when he was being used for comfort and security and to work through grief. He'd felt it from her all along, and somewhere inside him, he'd known it would end. That's why she was never willing to tell Carl about them. 

That knowledge hadn't made how he felt any less real. It didn't make the pain from her saying it out loud like that any less powerful. 

He nodded to her, letting go of her hand slowly as he looked into her hard eyes. "Lor. I don't want to mess things up between you and him anymore. If you know me at all, you know I love the shit out of Rick. I just want a chance to know my baby." 

"Even if this baby is yours, it will never be yours," she snapped. 

Shane rose slowly, running his hand over his head and nodding again. Without a word, he turned and walked away.


	7. Caught Like A Wildfire Out of Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence  
> character death (cannon)  
> mentions of masturbation 
> 
> Gawd, Shane is thirsty. All the damn time.

Bad decisions were his stock and trade these days, and he passed out the guns without stopping to consider if there was a better option. He wanted to fix something, just one thing that was making him crazy. 

Walkers in a barn could be put down. 

Everyone tried to stop him, and maybe he should have taken that as a sign. But he was right on this, and seeing Rick and the old man leading more of those dead bastards around by the neck just sealed it for him. They needed to be safe, not for Rick to bring more of the things to their goddamn camp!

He was too far gone to see her coming, shooting at one of the walkers in his last, desperate bid to get Hershel to see reason. If this didn't work, he'd throw open the damn doors himself and start clearing them out. 

She came from the side and had his gun from him in a blur, tossing it toward Daryl as she squared off with him. He reacted, not seeing his maybe-friend scrambling off him to her feet as she chucked the gun away and muttered something to him. He just knew he'd been attacked from the side and his training took over for him. He clocked her once in the jaw and her head snapping to the side was almost enough to snap him out of it and get him to stop. He didn't want to hurt any goddamn woman, and he definitely didn't want to hurt this goddamn woman, but she didn't really give him much choice.

He wasn't really sure how she'd gotten him pinned down or why he couldn't shake her loose, but later when he thought about it, it was hotter than he had any business admitting it to have been. He'd known she was strong, and fast, and smart, but having all that turned on him and her getting the best of him was something else entirely. Something he'd hated in the moment, but later? Yeah, not so much. 

And he'd have given anything to not put that shadow in her eyes when Sophia needed to be put down. 

He'd thought Lori was a rock and he still did, but Nameless telling Carl and Carol not to look as she shot down that little girl they'd been looking for? That moment, that image of her- gun out and shoulders back and standing ramrod straight- would forever be what strength meant to him now. 

Even the way her hand shook as he took the gun from it and pulled her in against him didn't do anything to change that in his eyes. 

 

 

 

The first time he and Daryl seemed to see eye to eye happened while Rick, Glenn, and Nameless were gone. Shane walked out to where Daryl had shifted the tent the two of them shared further from the group, eyeing his new campsite critically. 

"Hey, Dixon," he called as he approached, and Daryl looked up from doing something with wood and a knife and scowled at him. 

"The fuck do you want?" he muttered, turning back to what he was doing. 

Was he whittling? Shane wondered absently. Seemed like a redneck enough thing for Dixon to be doing, if kind of old fashioned. "I want to talk to you, man," he answered Daryl's rude question. 

"The hell about? Ain't like we're friends," Daryl said after a beat, setting down the stick he'd been working on and rising to walk over to the small fire. He poked at it a minute, then turned to the line he'd strung up with feathers and dead squirrels and shifted the strings of feathers around. 

Bolts, Shane realized suddenly. Daryl was making new bolts for his crossbow. Shane was impressed. Man knew how to survive, that was sure. 

"Of course we're not friends. I don't like you; you don't like me," he told Daryl with a sneer. 

Daryl shot him a glance that held just enough amusement for Shane to see it. "Finally, somethin' we agree on." 

"Came to talk about something else we agree on," Shane told him as he set his hands on his gun belt in an imitation of Rick. "Nameless." 

"Ya know she's got a damn name, right?" 

Shane shrugged. "Nameless works for her. She don't seem to mind." 

Daryl scoffed, sitting and grabbing his stick and knife again. "Yeah. What about her, man?" 

"I'm worried about her. Sophia- Sophia messed with her, and she doesn't want to admit it." 

Daryl's sharp eyes met his with the promise of violence. Shane wondered briefly if the other man was going to let his possessive streak come before her well-being, and was prepared to ask Daryl that outright when he sighed and stuck his knife point down in the tree trunk he was sitting on. The violence faded and turned to sadness. 

"Yeah. I know. How much she told ya about shit from when we was kids?" Daryl asked seriously, and Shane rubbed at his nonexistent hair in surprise. 

"I know about the foster dad. That asshole still breathing clean air?" 

Daryl's eyes glittered coldly and the bastard smirked. "Naw. He's been dead over a decade. But he's part of why Sophia gets to her- gets to both of us. Ed was an abusive asshole." 

"I know." It was Shane's turn to scoff, and he did. "Punched the shit out of him when I saw him hit Carol, at the quarry. Night he died, while you were on the hunt." 

Daryl nodded, grabbing the knife again and waving it at Shane. "Good on ya, man. I didn't like none of ya assholes, and shit knows Merle didn't neither, but we were waitin' for it to happen in front of us. Ed wouldn't been breathin' much longer. Don't take well to assholes who beat on women and children. Plus, my girl- she overheard somethin' Carol said back in the church, 'bout how Ed was lookin' at his own damn daughter." 

Shane shoved down the anger when Daryl called Nameless 'his' girl, like the redneck hadn't tossed her aside years before over some imagined shit with his brother. Dixon's last words made it easier, and Shane muttered a suggestion for what to do with Ed's corpse that had Daryl's eyebrows shooting up and an amused smirk that looked a hell of a lot like hers on his lips. 

"Well, I'll keep that one in mind if we're ever back at that damn quarry, Walsh. Shit, man." 

Shane flipped him off with an eye roll before giving him a serious look. "We gonna try and make her talk when she gets back?" 

"Back?" Daryl asked, rising. "The fuck ya mean, back?" 

Shane winced, remembering that he'd been the one who was supposed to tell Daryl where she'd gone. He did, and watched Daryl's face turn into a thundercloud of anger and something that looked like a hefty dose of guilt. 

Then Shane was muttering some more creative suggestions when the redneck asshole told him Lori had come looking for his help to find Rick and Glenn and Daryl'd told her to go herself. Shane turned on his heel and yelled behind him that Daryl was in charge until he fuckin' made it back and headed out at a dead run for the cars. 

 

 

He found Lori, blood on her face and walking in a daze, but the sun had been down for awhile before he did. He railed at her, worry for her and for his baby inside her making his inner asshole stand up and demand her attention. 

They made it back and the others were gathered worriedly, and Shane continued asking her what the fuck she thought she was doing. 

"You're gonna have a damn baby, Lori, you can't just keep thinkin' about yourself!" he snapped, and Lori's eyes widened as she stared at him. 

Oh shit, Shane had exactly enough time to think as the gathered group looked between him and her. 

"You're going to have a baby?" Carl asked from behind her. 

Shane looked at Lori's face, nodded shortly, and walked away running a hand over his hair to take up watch on top of the RV for the night. He was going to be in some deep ass trouble with her and Rick, that's for sure. 

 

 

The second time he and Daryl were in agreement was the next morning, as the sun rose and there'd been no sign of the truck she'd driven off in with Rick and Glenn. Shane had stayed on the damn RV all night, growing increasingly more worried as the hours stretched by and there'd been nothing at all coming up the road to the farm. 

The sun broke the horizon and Daryl fucking Dixon climbed the RV ladder and looked at him without saying anything. 

"Give it a couple more hours. Enough for the others to be up and moving. Then we go," Shane told him grimly, and Daryl had nodded once and climbed right back down. 

He was wearing that vest she'd given him, Shane noticed. 

 

 

He caught the tail end of what she was saying to Daryl, but it was the tone that mattered to him more than her words- sharp and biting and pissed off, but with an edge he didn't understand. 

"Hey, got some good shit, though. Maybe we'll get drunk tonight. Play Never Have I Ever," she offered, and from the look on Daryl's face, Shane could guess she'd winked at him or blown him a kiss or some other such flirtatious shit she was so damn good at. 

Dixon knew her even better than Shane did, though, and he was eyeing her like she was a bomb about to go off any minute and he wasn't really sure which wire would disarm and which would make her go nuclear. "I don't know what that fuckin' means, but it don't sound like a good idea," he told her warily. 

"I do. And it's not. Trust me," Shane told him, and Daryl's eyes narrowed, irritation flashing through them until Shane asked her what the hell happened and she gave some flippant answer. He fucked up, as usual, when he tossed Daryl under the bus over Lori's face, but then Dixon put his foot in it same as Shane had, which made him feel a little better even as she slapped them both back and put them in their places. They were glaring at each other, because apparently neither of them could be mad at her, when she turned and stepped away.

Her pulling a passed out asshole from the backseat of the truck led to Dixon giving him an entirely different kind of look, and then Shane was yelling at his best friend again for being an idiot and putting them all in danger. 

He was busy giving Rick hell during their meeting when she told him coldly that Rick had only killed one of the three friends. She'd killed another and Hershel had shot the third. 

Shane knew, since she'd told him as much, that she'd never killed anyone outright before. He flashed briefly to a dark road and an oncoming horde of dead and a gun going off in his hand, but try as he might he didn't know if he'd shot the man in the leg or the head. That pissed him off; Dixon's intense worried look at her pissed him off; Hershel's words about the kid's lack of threat pissed him off. Rick and Lori's fuckin' existence pissed him off. Everything pissed him off, and he started to just leave before he made something worse. 

She slapped that hand up and stopped him as he was walking past. 

Shane met eyes that flashed and sparked with the kind of anger rolling through him right then, black and hard and viciously cruel. Instead of backing down, he met that anger with his own. If Shane was good for anything, it was fighting, and he knew the signs of someone desperate for a way to let that anger loose. He'd fight her however she wanted, damn it- words or fists didn't matter much to him right then. 

"Wanna go another round, Officer Walsh?" she asked, her voice low and throaty, and he knew- like the rest of the damn room knew- she wasn't talking about a fight. 

He thought about her wrapped around him, that voice a whisper in his ear urging him on; his hands in her hair and that damn mouth on him, bringing him almost to the violent crashing high- and oh, hell yes. Yes, he wanted to go another round. 

But the eyebrow she twitched wasn't the pierced one and something in her eyes just wasn't quite right, and Shane found himself snarling at her instead about what the hell her problem was. 

She went off like that bomb Daryl'd been looking at her as if she was, an rising tide of fury and pain that shot out at Shane, at Daryl, at Rick, at the whole damn group as she unleashed the temper he'd gotten glimpses of a few times. Fuck him if it didn't call to one he kept only nominally chained, and fuck him if it didn't make him want her even goddamn more. He knew what fire they were when she wasn't pissed off; he could only fucking imagine- hungrily, desperately- what they'd be if they angry fucked. 

There'd be casualties, he decided, as her rant suddenly went from fueled by anger to fueled by a deep well of pain and misery and he felt like an asshole for cracking that control she'd been using. 

She'd never killed a man before, and now she had. Shane knew what feeling like a bad person did to his soul, and now he could see what it was doing to her as she railed about what she would do for them if they could just get their act together and decide who was in charge. When she turned and strode away, Shane locked eyes with Dixon and jerked his head in her direction, knowing damn well she wouldn't need him today. She'd need the person who did for her what she did for him, and Shane cared enough about her not to even mind that it wasn't him. 

 

 

It was a tense three days between them coming back and Rick deciding a plan of action to get the kid out of there. Shane tried to talk to Lori again, and that backfired on him horribly when he couldn't keep a lid on the bubbling anger inside. She'd ended up telling him in that vicious hiss he was beginning to absolutely fucking hate that he could go to hell and stay there for all she cared. 

He was behind the wheel of his Hyundai in the middle of the night that night, ready to leave and everyone be damned, when he saw her crawl out of the tent she shared with Dixon and start walking the field with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Shane had the car turned on but all the lights off, and a glance at the clock on the dash said twelve thirty. 

Twelve thirty was when she'd said her foster dad used to start pacing outside her door, and she woke up then every night still. 

Shane turned the car off and climbed out with a sigh, running a hand over his head and making his way into the field. 

She'd been startled when he walked up, but she'd flashed him a smile that didn't meet her eyes and called him officer as she asked what he was doing up. He'd shrugged and made up some bullshit that she'd accepted with a nod, and he asked her if she wanted to talk. 

"You know, Daryl told me if I didn't talk to him, he'd make me talk to you," she said quietly, glancing up at him with a soft, genuine smile on her lips. "I asked him if you were friends now." 

Shane shuddered dramatically, just to get her to crack the grin that she did. "Hell no," he told her. 

"That's what he said. He's a good friend. The best friend," she mused, looking at the tent. Then she looked into his eyes. "You're a good friend too." 

"Aww, we ain't friends, girl," he muttered, and she tilted her head, surprise and maybe a flash of hurt in her face. He grinned at her as he continued. "We barely tolerate each other, remember?" 

She let loose that full-throttle laugh that stirred him up way too damn much. They talked a little longer, exchanging good-natured insults and a few sexually charged innuendos, before she went back to bed with a squeeze of his arm. Shane sighed as he ran a hand over his hair and watched her go, then tried not to feel guilty about getting off with her in mind before he dropped off to sleep himself.


	8. This Gun's For Hire, Even If We're Just Dancin' In The Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence

Shane wasn't even going to think about the utter disaster that had been trying to drop the kid off somewhere with food and water. Nameless had been in the same full-bitch mode she'd been living in for the past few days- not that Shane didn't think she'd earned it; and not that he'd been much better- Rick had told him he knew about Shane and Lori; and then he and Rick had gotten in a goddamn fistfight that she'd jumped right into the damn middle of to take their guns from them. 

Shane hated how damn good she was at that shit. He hated how much he loved how damn good she was at that shit. 

He'd agreed Rick was in charge, because, honestly, she'd had a point, the countless times she'd made it to him. Rick was fucking good at leading. And Shane- well, he'd heard her tell Rick he was a little messed up right now. He'd heard her tell Rick that if Shane was a threat so was she. 

Most of all, he'd heard her tell Rick that it was Shane's baby. And he'd seen the look in Rick's eyes at having someone else call him on that. He'd heard her go bat for him. 

He didn't want to disappoint the steady faith she had in him, despite all the times he lost his shit and did something stupid. 

Then after they'd gotten caught in the damn bus and Rick had come and he'd watched her dive head first through the window and pull him in, he'd kissed her. She'd been looking at him with that look, the same one he'd seen when she'd shoved her fingers in his hair and fallen over that first wild peak in the C.D.C, and as they peeled away from almost certain death, he'd hauled her to him and kissed her before he thought about it. 

She'd laughed again and leaned into his side for a moment, and Shane didn't fucking care if he was an idiot. He let himself admit that he might love Lori, but he was head over heels for this crazy fucking criminal who sang Springsteen and Led Zepplin and Megadeth- who the fuck knew Megadeth anymore?- and ran headfirst into danger and who didn't have one single goddamn clue the effect she had on him. 

 

 

Shane didn't mind Dale's nosy, annoying ass talking to everyone about what to do with the kid, or even about him. Dale was Dale, and Shane didn't give a shit what he thought. Old man didn't say anything to the others he hadn't already said to Shane's face, so what difference did it make if he spread that shit around some more? 

Rick had agreed to the big group meeting at sunset, and Shane made sure to take a few deep breaths and 'try to find some zen, man' as Daryl had muttered to him when Shane walked out to have a talk with him at his campsite. 

Daryl'd seen him coming, snorted, and jerked his head toward the field. When they were far enough away, Dixon had told Shane she'd been sacked out in the tent after Dale's visit. He'd scowled and asked what the hell Shane wanted, and Shane had told him, truthfully, that he was just checking in on her. He told Dixon what had gone down out there, figuring she'd glossed over some of the finer details. From the way Daryl'd rolled his eyes, Shane had been right.

"Bitch don't know how to stay the fuck outta trouble to save her life. Never fuckin' did," Dixon muttered, then met Shane's eyes. "Better keep yourself together, man. She's goin' to bat for ya like she would for fuckin' Merle. Don't make her regret it. Try to find some fuckin' zen, man." 

So at the fucking group meeting, he leaned against the wall and kept an eye on her as Dale started his arguments, knowing damn well the old man was going to lob some accusations around. Shane was all braced for it and prepared to keep his zen attitude- or at the very least limit himself to some judicious scoffing and maybe a sarcastic comment- but the asshole turned on her. She looked completely unphased, possibly even mildly impressed he'd had the balls to call her a killer and a criminal, but Shane stalked over and grabbed Dale by the shirt. 

If the man had something to say, he could damn well say it to Shane. Not to her, damn it. 

Of course he knew she could fight her own goddamn battles- and probably better than Shane could fight them for her, at that- but he didn't want her to have to. Which was part, if not all, of why he tried to get her to stay in the house with the others and let him and Rick and Dixon handle putting the kid down. 

The fact that Daryl came down on Shane's side had him glancing at the redneck in surprise, but of course that seemed to work against them. Shane was wondering if that was deliberate; if whenever others ganged up on her she set her mind on doing the opposite of what they wanted with even greater determination. He kept at it, despite her rejection of the idea that went so far as to fix him with a look of abject boredom and stare right through him, until Rick finally snapped at them to leave her alone and let her watch their damn backs. 

She'd raised an eyebrow, smirked at him, and muttered, "Yeah, Walsh, let me watch your damn back, idiot." 

Shane sighed and decided to take a page from her book and just fucking ignore everything he didn't like. So he ignored that. 

 

 

It was Dale's dying that shifted something inside Shane even more. He didn't think it was guilt, because he was in no way responsible for what happened to the old man, but there was something about it all the same. 

He kept an eye on Nameless that morning, him and Dixon both. Daryl had whisked her away to their campsite after he'd shot Dale for her and Rick, and Shane had been too busy doing damage control with the group to do more than feel a wave of relief. He'd spent the night on watch, seeing Daryl sitting outside their tent most of the night as well. 

Shane was learning a begrudging respect for Dixon that pissed him off more than a little. 

Andrea invited herself along for the ride when Dixon had appeared like a ghost in camp the next morning and said the two of them were checking the property line for any more of the walkers and Shane should come along. Shane had been damn near floored, but Daryl had started walking toward the truck before he could say anything to him about the offer. 

When he got a look at her face, he got it. 

Andrea was being a bitch to her, to Shane, to everyone, and Shane was starting to get irritated. The fuck did she think had happened between them out there, man? They'd fucked. Sort of. Shit, woman should have gotten the goddamn message by now that Shane wasn't into commitment. 

At least, he thought as he watched Nameless vault gracefully out of the bed of the truck, not with Andrea.

Then Rick had spoken about Dale at the funeral, how Dale wanted to heal the group and how they'd do it his way from now on. Shane thought that sounded like a load of bullshit, but hell. He slapped his zen back into place and even, as she put it, tried to 'mind the asshole' when he disagreed with Rick. 

From the fact that Rick didn't look any more pissed off after Shane opened his mouth than he had before, Shane figured he'd succeeded. 

 

 

She came to talk to him, and left him with a smile and the lingering feeling of her lips on his cheek. Lori came to talk to him and left him with vague guilt and the beginnings of a headache throbbing right behind his ears. Then Carl came to talk to him and left him with Daryl's gun, a growing realization that Lori had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on in that kid's life, and the knowledge that he needed to talk to Rick. He just hoped he'd manage to do it in a way that Rick heard him. 

Thank God for Nameless, Shane decided. He didn't know how and he honestly didn't know why, but she'd become their mediator and she was fucking good at it too. She fixed Rick with that look, both eyebrows raised and the set to her lips that said clear as day 'don't be an idiot about this', and Rick snarled and took the gun from her hands, agreeing to talk to Carl. 

Shane let out a breath of relief as her expression softened and gave her a nod of thanks. 

He figured he'd earned a goddamn break after all that shit, and he headed toward the woods when no one was looking to have five minutes, just five damn minutes, alone. 

 

 

He was heading back out to finish the windmill lookout when he saw Dixon come out of the shed at a dead run, leaving the door open behind him. 

Since Rick, Daryl, and Nameless were supposed to be taking the prisoner from that very shed, Shane had the feeling that wasn't a good sign. He hit the ground running and intersected a very grim-faced Rick and Dixon with his carefully blank eyes as they came striding out of the house and back toward the shed. 

"What's happened?" he asked Rick. 

Rick turned hard eyes on Shane. "You do something with Randal?" 

Shane scoffed and glared right back. "That what you think, man? Seriously? What the fuck's going on?" 

"Kid's gone," Daryl snapped. 

"Shit," Shane muttered, running a hand over his head absently. "We done a head count of our people yet? Make sure everyone's here?" 

Of course, they accounted for everyone. Everyone except Nameless. 

Shane and Daryl locked eyes and Shane saw the same suspicion in Daryl's that was growing in him. Shane just didn't know if it meant the kid had gotten the drop on her somehow, or if she'd taken matters into her own hands vigilante style. She'd been a little off kilter all damn day, after all, and Shane wasn't going to rule it out as a possibility. 

But he also wasn't going to mention it either. 

 

 

The three of them stood outside the shed with their heads together, arguing over what the fuck to do about the situation, when he caught the movement at the edge of the trees. She leaned against one, hands bound, face pale and bloody, and leaves in her hair. 

She looked exhausted and goddamn pissed off. 

Shane bolted for her, reaching for her face with both hands to see how bad the damage was. It turned out to be just a scrape, and she brushed it off and started apologizing as Daryl cut the fucking duct tape off her wrists. Shane started scanning the trees, more to keep the fear he couldn't get under control from being visible than anything else. 

When she mentioned the camp nearby, Shane was in agreement with her over doing it then. But there was something in the way she said the kid was babbling awhile that had him striding back to her side and giving her a hard look. 

"What'd he say?" he asked, and she tried to brush it off. But in the little glance she shot at Daryl as she said they'd let her join them 'after', Shane got a feeling. 

"After what?" he snarled as Daryl turned on Rick and informed him he was going tonight.

She looked at him, the faintest shadow of the fear he'd glimpsed a few times in her eyes, and Shane nodded, throwing his voice with theirs. Three against one, and Rick looked from Daryl's face to Shane's to hers and agreed.


	9. Did She Make You Cry, Make You Break Down, Shatter Your Illusions of Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence  
> Lori being a bitch

Shane was pondering what the hell was going on with Randal the walker, downright disappointed he hadn't gotten a change to kick the undead asshole's ass into next week. He'd blindfolded Nameless, tied her up, and put a gun on her, taking her back to his asshole buddies as a fucking prize. 

Shane would rain holy fucking hell down on these bastards when he found them for even so much as thinking about laying a hand- 

Fuck. Walkers were every-fucking-where, and headed straight back for home. 

 

 

Panic was becoming an all too familiar feeling for Shane, and it lanced through him even more when she hit the deck. He reached out a hand to haul her up, scanning the darkness to see how much space they had ahead of the herd. She started shoving at his shoulder almost immediately, telling him to go. 

Like fuck was he leaving her. No goddamn way. 

Her eyes were wide and frantic when she hissed at him that she'd fucked up her ankle. 

"Aww, we've been here before, sweetheart," he said dryly, already trying to figure out how to carry her ass out of there if he needed to. 

She growled something back about sacrificing someone to get out of it, and Shane ignored her, wrapping an arm around her and already getting her moving. She told him to leave her there, but Shane had just discovered that her trick of brushing off people's objections and just doing whatever the hell she wanted worked pretty damn well for him, too. 

"Daryl'd kill me if I came back to that house without you," he grunted at her as he got her moving. And I'd let him, he added grimly to himself. 

No way in hell he was leaving her out there. 

He kept telling himself that all the way through the trees, even as they got pushed around off their course over and over again. She sagged in relief when they hit the field and saw the house and the barn ahead, but Shane knew just how close the dead were on their heels. He knew they wouldn't make the house, and he made the snap decision to get to the barn. 

He had absolutely no intentions of abandoning her to die, no matter how many times she told him to leave her and go ahead. When she grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him to face her, he was all set to toss her over his shoulder and start running. Shit, they'd probably get there faster that way. 

It was the look in her eyes that stopped him. There was no fear, no panic. Instead, he saw the same look he'd seen when she took down Sophia- the line of her jaw, the calm determination in clear and unclouded eyes, the set to her shoulders and ramrod straight back. 

"Shane fucking Walsh, if you don't leave me here and go save those people, I will kill you myself. We are the only people here strong enough to handle shit like this, Officer. You, me, Daryl, and Rick, and Rick and Daryl might be dead. If they are, it is on your shoulders to rescue Lori and Carl again, ok? Now, run!" she commanded him. 

He did. He didn't have any choice in the matter, and he knew she'd assume it was her telling him rescuing Lori and Carl was on his shoulders. 

It wasn't that. 

It was the way she held his eyes and offered him the trust that he'd come back for her. It was the conviction that not only would she survive and be fine, but that he was as strong as she was and could handle this. 

Shane was so used to feeling ashamed and guilty and he hadn't realized until that moment how much it had eroded his faith in himself. But she gave it all back to him with those clear, steady eyes and the words 'we are the only people here strong enough to handle shit like this, Officer.' 

She shoved him away and took off, and he hoped to hell that confidence that she'd always survive, always come out on top, would keep her safe for him. 

 

 

When he skidded to a halt at the house, he found the others out on the porch, staring into the night with wide, frightened eyes. As he tried to speak through aching lungs, Rick and Daryl came out of the darkness to his left. 

"Come on people, grab your gear and get to the cars," Rick started, but Daryl took one look at Shane by himself and came at him with the crossbow aimed right between Shane's eyes. 

"Where the fuck is she?" Dixon snapped at him as Shane put his hands up slowly. 

They wasted goddamn precious time arguing about Daryl killing Shane; then wasted more arguing about the plan. When the barn went up in flames, Daryl's eyes widened before his glare returned to Shane. 

"Ya a damn lucky bastard, Walsh," Dixon snarled at him. "Everybody get ya asses in the cars and let's go!" 

Daryl strode off toward the damn motorcycle and Shane knew she'd be fucking pleased with his priorities. 

Shane ended up in the RV making a bee line for the rear of the barn, where she said she'd make her way. The barn was in full burn now, and Shane hoped to hell the others would do their part and keep the walkers distracted enough that he could extract her quickly and painlessly. 

As soon as he saw the crowd under her, that plan went out the window. And somehow, in the middle of all the chaos, he caught that million-watt smile when she saw him. Her faith in him had never wavered, he saw, and goddamn did that feel good. 

Of course then she swan-dived off the roof and rolled, and he had to shove his way out of the window of the driver's seat because the walkers were breaking into the RV. Standing with an arm around her and hers around his shoulders, each of them with a gun in their free hand, shouldn't have given him such a feeling of fierce satisfaction. 

But goddamn it, they made a team, didn't they? 

 

 

They made it out, joined the others, and had a fair amount of tearful reunions. She'd been hurting when they finally got there, insisting that damn ankle would be fine if they went in the long way, and he'd been practically holding her up by the time they made it there. 

The look on Dixon's face when he saw them felt damn good, though, Shane realized. Daryl met his eyes and nodded once. That was enough for Shane to know he'd been forgiven for leaving her in the first place, and when Daryl didn't shove him out of the way as Shane wrapped her damn ankle up, he had a feeling maybe he'd earned a little more than that, too. 

Learning that all of them were doomed to turn eventually was a shock, Shane could admit it. He hadn't seen that one coming, though maybe he should have. But watching and listening to the others question Rick not telling them and lose their collective shit over the news, Shane had the abrupt realization that Nameless had been right about something. 

They were the ones who did the hard shit. Who made sure it got carried out because they could take on that weight. It wasn't that Rick was weak, Shane realized as his friend invited these frightened people to take a hike if they didn't like his calls. It was that Rick thought about more than just survival. Rick saw the difference between surviving and living, and kept striving for that second option. He hadn't told them because he'd known they'd react like this. Shane wouldn't have made that connection, because Shane didn't see the world like that. Shane assumed that everyone knew the world as he knew it, and that so very clearly wasn't the case that Shane almost didn't know what to do with that information. 

That was what a leader needed to do. He needed to see more than just the fastest path to keeping everyone alive. He needed to see and understand the people he was trying to lead; to know how to get people to trust him and keep that trust. A leader needed to be someone who put everyone else first and shouldered knowledge or responsibility or danger for someone else.

Shane could do some of those things, but not all of them. Shane made hard choices, ran into danger, but he would never know how to take care of a group's emotional needs as well as their physical ones. Shane wasn't a councilor or a friend. He was the type who would leave a stranger behind to be eaten so someone Shane loved would live. 

Rick would never do that; he would be too busy seeing another person with needs and loved ones and worth, and that was why Rick was in charge. But it was also why Rick needed people like Shane and like her. 

He glanced at her, sitting cross-legged in the spot she'd collapsed and giving Rick a pleased smirk as Rick laid down the law. When Rick looked at her, Shane saw her cross her eyes and stick out her tongue at him. Shane laughed as she shot her hands into the air and declared 'finally!' to Rick's pronouncement. Daryl laughed as well, but the others weren't so convinced. 

Shane looked around at their faces when his friend strode away and sighed. "People, that man's right. He's done everything that needed doing, and I fought him every damn step of the way. You're going to argue now? Because he didn't tell you something? No. He's in charge, and that's that. President of the club," he added to her, letting himself run a hand over her hair as she beamed up at him. 

Yeah, Rick needed the two of them. Rick needed people he could trust to not question him every step of the way; people he could trust to take care of what needed to be taken care of; to protect even at their own expense. As she turned to crack some joke to Daryl, either ignoring or oblivious to the state of everyone else, Shane vowed right then and there that he'd be more like her, so Rick would have his shoulder to lean on as well. 

 

 

He kept his vow, he thought. Winter was hard and cruel and brutal, but Shane stayed at Rick's side. He got to see his friend come back, the one who smiled at him and teased him about shit; the one who relied on Shane's advice and on Shane's ear. 

He'd really fucking missed Rick, Shane realized. 

It sucked to watch him and Lori deteriorate, but Shane couldn't bring himself to feel all that bad about it. It was like while Rick was in that damn coma, some bastard god had decided Rick could only have one- either Shane or Lori. Not both. He couldn't help feeling grateful that Rick seemed to be choosing him. 

It started the night of Rick's announcement about the C.D.C, but it just got worse from there. Shane never brought up the fact that Lori was carrying his baby again, and he made it clear with his actions to both of them that he didn't want Lori anymore. Lori herself was the one who brought it up, and in the worst possible way. 

Shane heard all about the argument from Carl, and he couldn't believe they'd done that in front of the kid. Shane had been pissed, practically shaking with anger, when Carl had walked up and asked Shane if he still loved the kid's mom. Shane had stared at him and asked just what the hell he meant by that. 

Carl told him he'd heard Lori telling Rick that the baby was Shane's, and since babies happened when a man and a woman loved each other very much- 

Shane had shut him up right then and asked him when he'd overheard all this. Carl sighed and said Rick and Lori were fighting in another room of the farmhouse the group had managed to find and clear. Lori had been laying into Rick about not telling them shit, and something along the lines of 'at least Shane told me everything' came out of her mouth, followed by 'and I'll never have to wonder how he feels about me or the baby, either.' 

Shane winced when Carl told him all that, remembering the argument Rick had been telling him he and Lori had the morning Rick had gotten shot. Apparently sharing still wasn't one of his buddy's strong suits, but that was a low damn blow all the same. Shane had been on the receiving end of a few of Lori's low blows lately, and he could sympathize. More than anything, though, it pissed him off that she'd say that where Carl could hear. 

He'd done his best to tell Carl something- enough to calm the kid down, anyway- and sent him off to find Nameless and Daryl and get them to take the watch Shane had been heading to. Shane went to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Grimes and found Lori using that vicious, bitchy hiss that left him feeling like scum of the earth no matter what he had or hadn't done. 

Shane had interrupted the fight then to ask if they'd known Carl was listening, and Rick had turned a more enraged look than Shane had ever seen before on Lori and then stalked from the room. Shane saw him later, sitting in a corner and talking seriously to Carl, who was nodding along like he understood, his little face looking less confused and tormented than when he'd talked to Shane. Thank God. 

 

 

As the winter wore on, Rick and Lori went to shit, but he and Rick came back. They fought a few times, even throwing punches again over some shit to do with food, Shane thought. But they were always fine. Shane watched Lori get bigger and Rick get haggard and Carl turn into a little soldier. He watched Daryl and Nameless get over some of their shit, though the two of them could fight even worse than Rick and Lori in some ways. 

At least the two of them were open about it, though. They'd gotten into one spectacular battle fairly early on about Daryl fucking killing her foster dad. Shane had snorted and said good for Dixon. He was glad they'd taken care of that rapist, child-molesting bastard. Dixon had shot him a glare that could have started a fire on its own it was so damn strong, and Shane had quietly backed off and done some damage control with the rest of the group who'd overheard that weren't privileged to the same information Shane himself was regarding the bastard. 

He didn't have to say much to have the look of shock and fear fading from their eyes, that's for sure. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, Shane woke up to the sound of a couple fighting in low tones, and he'd thought at first it was Rick and Lori. He eased partly up to see Nameless silhouetted in the window by moonlight, middle finger up at the shadowed form of an irritated Dixon as she spoke in a rapid whisper. Shane had smirked until he caught his name coming in Dixon's scornful accent, and he listened harder as she tossed her hands up and responded. 

"- shit's sake, Dixon. You don't fucking own me, man. If I want to sleep with Shane, I'll sleep with Shane. If I want to talk to Shane about shit, I will. Jesus, asshole. He's my friend." 

"Ya don't make friends with men ya sleep with, girl," Daryl snapped back. 

Shane frowned, wondering just what the hell that meant. She shook her head and set the rifle's scope to her eye, panning the trees as she said something back that Shane didn't catch. Daryl muttered to, and her head whipped to look at him. Shane could imagine the strength of the glare she was leveling on Daryl, and he winced in sympathy. 

"Fuck you, Daryl. You dumped me. Shane's my fucking friend. I care about him. Deal with it, damn it. Now go the fuck to sleep. I've got this." 

Shane lay back down, thinking about 'you don't make friends with men you sleep with' and 'I care about him' a little too damn hard, and he knew it.


	10. Desperado, Why Don't You Come to Your Senses?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> character death (cannon)  
> cannon typical violence

The thing Shane missed the most, almost as soon as they took over the prison, was sleeping beside her. It was something that had just sort of happened, not like he'd been trying to or anything. 

As the winter got damn cold, the whole group started sleeping closer and closer together. Shane had been sitting with her one night, huddled close to the fire while Daryl was on watch. They'd been cutting up the way they did, involved in an intense debate about what qualified as rock, hard rock, classic rock, glam rock, and hair metal. She had opinions, and damn Shane just like talking to her. She'd been shivering, teeth chattering as she talked, and Shane had raised his arm in invitation. 

She'd scooted closer and let him drape his arm over her shoulders, and she'd fallen asleep against him when they fell silent a little while later. When Daryl had gotten off watch and Shane had taken his place, they'd just kind of swapped out who she was using as a pillow. Daryl's lips had twitched when he'd seen her with her head on Shane's shoulder, but he'd given Shane that nod of thanks Shane found himself oddly pleased by. Somewhere along the way, it seemed he'd started to like the damn Dixon.

Incidents like that had repeated, until it became second nature for them to set all their packs together. Daryl had eyed him a few times, but as the winter wore on, they'd become what Shane might almost call friends, if it weren't for the little fact that they were both in love with her. They both knew it too, but for the most part agreed to ignore it. It made life easier. 

No matter how bizarrely it had come about, Shane didn't sleep that first night inside the walls because she wasn't there next to him. He lay awake in the dark, staring at the bunk above his head, and wondered how in the hell he'd gotten in this deep with a woman who was head over heels for someone else. 

Did he just have a talent for loving unavailable women? Because no matter how much she protested that she and Daryl were just friends, Shane saw the way she fucking looked at him. He heard the way she talked about him. He knew, if it ever came to him or Dixon, Dixon was the winner. 

And the worst part, the hardest fucking part, was the knowledge that he wanted her happy more than he wanted her. 

He heard Dixon start pacing on the ledge, then heard his rapid steps down the stairs. He wondered briefly if everything was alright, rising in silence and moving to the open door of the cell. He glanced out and saw the two of them, leaning against the wall so close they were practically touching. She was looking into his eyes with that soft expression she only had for Daryl, and Shane sighed. 

He wondered if this was it as she laughed hard and slapped a hand over her mouth to hold it in, casting a guilty look around. Shane drew back into the shadows as she did, not wanting to spoil the moment for them, he supposed, but not able to leave them to it. He kept watching as Daryl looked at her seriously, saying something that had the smile fading from her face and tension coming into the formerly relaxed lines of her body. 

He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he watched the way her face changed, that confident armor cracking and falling away as Daryl moved and gestured. Then Dixon was stepping in front of her, crowding close until Shane couldn't see anything but her hands, pressed against the cinder block wall and digging in. 

Shane sighed when Dixon kissed her, stepping back into the darkness to lay on his bed and wonder once again how the hell he kept ending up here. 

 

 

It took all of two seconds around Dixon the next morning to realize they still weren't back together. Whatever had happened after Shane had stopped watching clearly hadn't been good, because Dixon was walking around with an even bigger scowl than normal and Nameless slid in from outside with tired eyes and the absolute bitchiest attitude Shane had ever seen from her. 

Even after she'd killed the guy, she hadn't been this much of a fuckin' moody shit, Shane thought when she took T Dog's head off over absolutely nothing. T looked at Shane with a bewildered expression as she stalked off, and Shane had shrugged. 

"Daryl. The hell is wrong with her?" he asked the redneck as the others were busy debating what to take with them to look for the pharmacy and cafeteria. 

Daryl scoffed and walked away without a word. So next Shane went to the source, asking her point blank what had happened between them. He added, trying to keep it casual and afraid he was failing, a bad joke about them having sex. 

She'd glared at him with such heat he'd wanted to grin. Now he was getting somewhere. If he pissed her off enough, she'd start talking eventually. He'd learned that trick on the road during the winter. 

Of course, he ran out of time when walkers came out of nowhere. Hershel lost a leg, they found motherfucking prisoners still alive and hiding in the cafeteria, and one of them had a gun and a hard-on for Nameless as soon as he set eyes on her. Shane got a little distracted trying to keep everyone alive and all, but her extreme bitch attitude wouldn't be ignored. 

She finally told him that Daryl had told her he still loved her. Shane had been waiting for whatever the rest of it had to be- 'and then he yelled 'psych!' and ran off' or 'and then he said he was leaving the group'- because there was no way in hell she was trying out-bitch goddamn Lori over that shit, but no. There hadn't been any more. 

He stewed on that while the whole fucking place fell apart, Rick killed one asshole and locked another one out with the walkers, and she looked a little too enamored of the baseball bat she was swinging casually as they walked the remaining two prisoners to D block and left them behind. 

He was still fuming over it as he caught the tail end of Dixon confronting her about her goddamn attitude. It was the rising edge of hysteria in her tone, in the words he couldn't quite catch, that had him pausing in the doorway to look back at them. Every inch of her radiated irritation and Shane watched in amusement as Daryl leaned in and snarled something that had her straightening and glaring after him as he stalked off, looking shocked. 

Shane would have asked Dixon what the hell he'd said that shut her up so effectively, but Daryl shoved by him without a word and she did the same. 

 

 

He intended to just offer an ear when he went out to find her. Really, that's all. 

But she snarled at him and he snarled back, and somehow he ended up snapping at her. He could see the damn vulnerability in her face and hear it in her voice, and that pissed him off all the more. If she was this fucking crazy over Daryl goddamn Dixon, why the absolute fuck didn't she do something about it? Didn't she know Shane would have endured nearly anything in the world to have her to look at him like she looked at Daryl? 

He told her as much, at least the part about her being a bitch and how she should be grateful, and she shoved off from the wall and stepped up to him. Her eyes held that same look he'd seen on Hershel's farm, when she'd asked if he wanted to go another round, and motherfucker if it didn't have the same damn effect now as it did then. 

She added that coy little smirk and told him they could hate fuck if he wanted. 

Oh, Nameless, he thought sadly. If she had any idea how much he wanted, she'd never talk to him again. 

 

 

She had blood all over her goddamn hands from cutting open Lori to save his daughter's life. 

Shane was trying to figure out how in the hell everything had gone so spectacularly, utterly wrong in the space of just a few moments, but Lori and Carol and T Dog were dead and Rick was somewhere down in the boiler block losing his fucking mind and Carl was sitting there with his head down and Rick's hat covering his face, not saying a goddamn word to anyone. Shane's new baby daughter was wailing like she was dying and Shane was afraid she was, and Daryl and Nameless had ridden off to try to find her some formula and diapers and shit. 

Shane was trying to hold himself and everyone else together, and frankly, he was fucking failing. 

He couldn't stop seeing the look in her eyes as she stood in front of the cell block and tried not to touch anything with hands that were stained red. He thought about the way she'd looked through him, not at him, when he'd asked if she was ok. 

Maggie had filled them in on what happened, and Shane had held onto Carl for a long time, trying to offer the kid whatever comfort he could. Carl had let him hold him, then shoved him away and went to sit at one of the tables and stare at Hershel and his little sister with haunted eyes. 

Shane was sitting beside the kid when they came back, Daryl heading straight for Shane's daughter. Shane's eyes narrowed as he looked from her to Dixon, and he wondered just what the fuck had happened out there. She looked more herself, but there was an edge to her motions and she wouldn't look any of them in the eye. 

He tried to keep her inside and she threatened to kick his ass again, and an ill-timed attempt at the humor that usually colored their interactions, he made a joke about there being a fuck option last time. 

"Things change, Walsh," she snapped, and her eyes cut straight to Daryl feeding the baby. 

Well, damn, Shane thought as she brushed past. That finally happened.

 

 

He followed her when she went to talk to Rick, staying outside the boiler block in the cool night air as he tried to gather himself and process what the hell all had happened that day. He couldn't, and he'd given up all pretense of doing anything but sitting there stressing out over every damn thing when she came out the door and saw him. 

He reached out a hand for her automatically as he saw how damn tired and broken she looked. She flinched away and asked him not to touch her, and it took everything he had but he did as she asked. That shadow never left her face the whole time they talked, even as she asked about the baby and smiled when he told her she was doing good in there. Sacked out in Dixon's arms when he'd left. 

She'd tried to keep him from thanking her, after she noticed the crusted blood all over her hands, but he'd overruled her there. Now he had her sitting on her mattress in the hall, a bucket of water rapidly turning to a brown-red as he scrubbed at the blood that went up to her elbows in silence. 

Somewhere along the way, her arm in his hands had gone utterly limp, and he glanced up to see her completely asleep. Shane sighed and finished cleaning her up, then grabbed Dixon's poncho and draped it over her. They were effectively alone in the common area, Daryl out on watch and everyone else asleep or at least in their cells. 

Shane allowed himself something he figured he'd never get again, and stroked his fingers down her cheek before brushing her lips lightly with his. 

"Be happy," he whispered to her, and went to dump the water and crash himself.


	11. Tell Me Now, Baby, Is Good To You? Can He Do To You The Things That I Do?

Rage was an emotion Shane had plenty of experience with both before and after the world ended, but he had the feeling these days that someone upstairs had it out for him in particular. Watching Nameless and Daryl become a couple again before his eyes might have been the most painful experience of his life so far, though every time he thought that to himself another hit rolled in, worse than the one previous. 

He allowed himself to be convinced to stay behind when a team was assembled to go get Maggie and Glenn, more because someone had to parent Carl and the baby and it sure as hell wasn't going to be Rick right now, if his friend's tentative grasp on reality was any indication. He was pissed as hell about it, but he let himself be persuaded. 

"You watch her back, Dixon," he snarled at Daryl as they collected their gear. Daryl held his eyes for a minute, looking like he wanted to start a fight, but then he clapped Shane on the shoulder and walked by without a word. 

Shane didn't know what to think about that sympathy, and it kind of pissed him off. On the other hand, knowing Daryl wasn't going to be a possessive asshole was sort of a relief. Made it easier, Shane thought.

He didn't say goodbye to her, and she was too busy looking dazed and worried over another Nameless' involvement to notice. 

Hours passed and Shane went from worried to tense to annoyed to irritated to stressed the fuck out. Carl took advantage of Shane's distraction and went wandering around in the prison, coming back with four people and a body. What the fuck Shane was supposed to do about that, he didn't have a goddamn clue. So after they buried their dead, he left Carl and Carol and Hershel with strict orders to keep them locked in the common area and headed toward the guard tower. Fuck it all, he decided. Everything could wait until Rick got back and handled it.

Sometime in the darkness, as he paced the guard tower with his eyes glued to the scope of his rifle, he reached rage. 

Where the fuck were they? What the hell had happened out there? And why, why, had he agreed to stay behind instead of insisting he go with them to watch their backs? 

Rick was out there. She was out there. Half the people he cared about most in the world were out there in danger right now, and Shane was safe behind a bunch of fences and losing his goddamn mind. 

False dawn began to bring a glow to the sky as Carol climbed the steps of the guard tower and stood beside him, leaning on the railing. 

"Want to take a break? Go inside? I'll watch," she offered softly. 

Shane snorted and scanned the trees with the rifle's scope again, not trusting himself to speak. He knew all too well how much of an asshole he could be when he was this angry. Nameless never seemed to be bothered by it, but he'd learned the hard way that other people were. 

Carol patted his arm gently. "They'll be back. She'll be ok." 

Shane jerked his eye from the scope and glared at her. "I'm worried about all of them." 

Carol offered him a small, knowing smile. "I know you are. But you're about as hung up on her as it comes, honey. She'll be alright." 

Shane grunted and went back to the scope, dismissing her as he ground his teeth together to hold back the sarcastic response he wanted to make. Carol waited a beat, chuckled faintly, and headed back down the stairs. 

False dawn became the real thing, and he was practically vibrating with rage and the need to fucking do something. By the time he heard the engine and saw the car approaching the gates, Shane wasn't sure he was even capable of speech any more. He was definitely beyond rational thought. 

Down in the courtyard, and Carl leapt to his feet and followed Shane to the gate. The car rolled through and Shane's eyes narrowed when he saw Rick driving and Michonne in the passenger seat. 

Where the hell was Nameless? Woman didn't let anyone else drive a goddamn vehicle if she could possibly avoid that happening. 

He hiked back up after the car, tossing an arm around Carl's shoulders and wincing at the tension in the kid's body. Carl looked up from under Rick's hat and offered Shane a tight smile. 

"They're back, Uncle Shane. That means they're ok," Carl said seriously. 

Shane sighed. "I hope so, kid. I hope so." 

 

 

They were not ok, and neither was Shane. 

Rick helped Maggie and a beat all to hell Glenn out of the backseat as Shane and Carl walked up. Carl ran to Rick and Rick hugged him, but Rick's eyes met Shane's narrowed ones and he held up a hand in a calm-down gesture Shane had seen before. 

Shane opened his mouth to speak, and Maggie beat him to it. 

"They stayed out there," she snapped, eyes flashing with the temper Shane had seen come his way when he passed out guns back on her daddy's farm. 

"What?" he asked, intelligently.

"Brother, I need you to stay calm," Rick said, leveling Shane with the look Rick usually gave to aggressive criminals, suicidal fools, drunks, and whoever he was about to try to get to do his bidding. Shane had seen that look more than once directed at him, and the well of fury he'd tried so hard to tame over the winter came boiling up. 

"I am calm," he spat at Rick. Carl looked between them worriedly, and Carol came out of the cell block at that moment. She looked wildly around the group and her hands came to her mouth. 

Rick came forward and set a hand on Shane's shoulder. "She's fine. She's alive. I swear, brother, she's alive." 

Shane growled something that might have been 'then where the fuck is she?' and Rick looked pained. Maggie's voice cut through to him again, her tone sharp and cold. 

"She and Daryl chose Merle over us." 

Shane's head whipped to her. "Merle? Merle Dixon?" 

"Yeah," Glenn said. "He beat the shit out of me, and they wanted to bring him back here." 

"I tried, Shane," Rick said quietly. "I tried to get them to come back. They- they chose to stay with him." 

Shane shoved Rick's hand off his shoulder and stalked toward the boiler block, snarling over his shoulder that there were people in the cell block. 

 

 

He went down and killed a bunch of walkers, then came back up for building supplies. He'd found where the breach was and wanted to get it closed. He was met by a pissed off Glenn, a closed off Maggie, and Hershel's desperate, worried eyes. 

Turned out, Rick went nuts again and started shooting at nothing when he was introduced to the new people. He was now wandering around outside the prison gates, apparently. Glenn wanted to launch a one-man strike on this Governor, and Maggie was going through some shit that she most definitely didn't want to talk about.

Shane's head started pounding immediately and he started snapping orders. That, of course, pissed everyone off, but goddamn it he didn't care. 

She'd left. She'd made the choice he'd always fucking known she would, and she'd just left. Like none of them mattered. Like Shane didn't matter. 

Guess she really didn't make friends with guys she fucked, did she? 

Hershel went to talk to Rick, Glenn stormed off to check the front of the prison, and Shane was in the guard tower punching the wall when the shooting started. 

 

 

 

So, she came back and she brought Merle goddamn Dixon with her, and she thought everything was fine. She grinned at him and called him officer and asked if he was coming inside like she'd ducked around the corner to the store for smokes and strolled right back. Like she hadn't scared the shit out of him and then ripped his goddamn heart out and run away with it. 

And she had the nerve to look so fucking hurt when he snarled and snapped at her. She had the nerve to stand there with Daryl's arm around her and her eyes closed, so fucking pale Shane's hands shook with the need to shove her onto the nearest mattress and make her get some goddamn sleep, and then glare at him when he was being an asshole. 

Fucking hell, he thought as Beth, sweet, soft Beth who was looking after his baby girl better than Lori ever would have (and wasn't that an asshole thought for him to have?), cut through the brewing fight between him and Daryl with an angry yell. 

Shane stalked out of the room and back out to take watch. 

 

 

She wouldn't fucking leave him alone. She came out in the dark and the cold without her goddamn jacket or the vest he'd started to think was permanently sewn onto her shoulders. Teeth chattering in the chill, she stood there trying to get him to talk and looking at him with those wounded eyes when he kept brushing her off. 

Finally he stripped off his own jacket, incapable of letting her be cold even if he wasn't sure whether he wanted to hit her or kiss her. 

Didn't she see? Didn't she get that she'd made her choice and Shane wasn't it? Didn't she have any goddamn idea what being so close to her was doing to him? 

But she didn't. She didn't, and Shane tried to calm himself the fuck down, because they'd agreed to a one-time thing and that was it. He'd never told her what she was to him. He'd never had the words, or the guts. 

And now she belonged to someone else, and he was being an asshole to her because he wanted her instead. 

Fucking hell. He had to get control of himself. 

He saw the look in her eyes, the genuine confusion and hurt whenever she looked at him. It was so at war with the happiness she so obviously held at having both the Dixons there that he felt even more like a great big dick. 

Daryl even said something to him at one point, in a low growling threat that Shane either needed to find his goddamn zen again or just pick the damn fight already. Shane slammed his shoulder into Daryl's as he brushed by and didn't dignify that with any other kind of response. 

Fuck Dixon. 

 

 

He had to talk to her. Dixon's challenge rang in his ears, and the hurt that had flashed in her eyes when he'd commented that just because he and Andrea had fucked once it didn't make them friends had lingered in his mind. She didn't press, and having her at his side was seamless and reassuring as they covered the others. 

Shane knew he was a dick, though. He wanted to make it right, damn it. 

When Carl came in from watch and said she'd sent him inside, Shane headed into the night as well. Both Daryl and Merle saw him go and watched him with wary eyes. 

Fucking Dixons, he thought as he made his way to the fortified perch being used as a guard post now. Thought they owned her. Nobody fucking owned her. 

She held the rifle's scope to her eye and was talking to herself, and Shane felt the anger drain away. 

He was mad for her, he thought sadly. And she didn't even know. 

They fell into their usual banter, the easy rhythm to it that Shane had been aching for since Rick had come back without her. He wanted to tell her. He tried to. She deserved to know, damn it. 

But he couldn't. If he did; if he told her that he was crazy about her and he wanted her in his arms and his bed and by his side for the rest of however long they lived, his and his alone- 

He'd lose the friend he had as well as the woman he loved. 

Goddamn it. 

Right on the heels of that thought, she looked at him with those serious eyes and told him how glad she was that she'd gotten a chance to see past the cop and know the man. 

Well, Shane thought as he stared at her. If she was looking to kill him, he really wished she'd just fucking shoot him and be done with it. 

"You're a good man, Officer Walsh. I guess I more than tolerate you, so I hope whatever it is that's wrong between us gets resolved soon. I like having you as a friend," she said with a sweet smile that ripped all ability to breath from his lungs and set fire to his heart. 

He swallowed hard and looked away from her, knowing damn well if he stayed here beside her, he was going to do something he'd regret. He shoved a hand through his hair and demanded the gun, brushing aside her pleas for him to talk to her. 

He couldn't. His throat burned raw and he used every ounce of willpower he had not to pull her into his arms right then and there and make her see how much he needed her. He grabbed her hand to do just that as she started to walk away with that tiny frown that had him feeling like shit on a stick. 

He couldn't. She turned those wide, sad eyes on him and he deliberately didn't look her way. "We'll talk about it soon, Nameless. Promise," he muttered, dropping her hand. 

As she walked away, he whispered to the night, needing someone to hear it out loud from him even if she couldn't. 

"I more than tolerate you too, YN."


	12. Beautiful Loser, Where You Gonna Fall?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence

He might have gotten her killed. 

He convinced her to go with him to do something crazy, just the two of them, because he missed her, damn it. Then he tried to apologize, tell her what was going on without telling her he was head over heels in love with her and it was all because of motherfucking Bruce Springsteen- which she was humming absently when she walked up to him and was three quarters of his refusal to let her bring the Dixons along. He heard 'Born to Run' again and he wanted her to himself for awhile. 

He tried talking to her, and it was going well, all things considered. She looked at him with that soft, understanding smile, her genuine happiness that they were being friends again radiating from her as she touched his arm. 

The first kiss was an accident. He'd turned his head as she went to kiss his cheek, and it really, truly was accidental. 

The second? The second was Shane's control shattering at the feel of her lips on his, and he couldn't regret it even though he knew it was the beginning of the end for him. 

Her hands shoved at his shoulders and he flung himself away from her, turning so she couldn't see his face as he tried to get himself under control. He started apologizing immediately because it was all he could think to do, and then she snapped his name and 'zombies' in the tone that meant shit had hit the goddamn fan, even as her rifle snapped up and she fired at something over his shoulder. 

Sure enough, her tone was spot on, and before he knew it they were lost in the depths of the underworld and too busy trying to stay alive to worry about something like Shane kissing her when he shouldn't have. 

She asked if he trusted her, and Shane know they were colossally fucked if he didn't. He put his life in her hands, cracked a joke, and broke left on her mark. 

A few walkers his goddamn ass, he thought viciously a minute later as he ended up back to a wall and fending off three of them through sheer luck and panic at the fact that she wasn't at his side anymore. He heard what he thought was her voice, calling his name, and he yelled in response. He got his handful of walkers taken care of and looked around for her wildly, but she was nowhere he could find. 

Like when he'd left Otis behind, something snapped in Shane. Like a switch being turned to off in his head, he lost track of what was reality as he stormed through the boiler block, killing anything that moved. He found a trail of walkers where she'd obviously been, and when he burst out into the bright light of day, it was damn near blinding. 

He stopped and stared at the dead on the ground, leading into the woods. 

 

 

Shane still wasn't himself when he got back into C block. He remembered screaming for Daryl and Merle and Rick, and everyone converging on him where he stood panting and soaked in blood. 

Daryl had drawn on him immediately- no crossbow for Shane this time, he remembered. But, shit- he stood ready and staring to take the bullet in the brain. He held Dixon's eyes and basically dared him to do it. He wanted him to do it. It'd save him the trouble if she didn't make it.

Daryl's finger twitched on the trigger and Merle ripped the gun from Daryl's hand, snarling something at the younger Dixon that Shane didn't care enough to really listen to. Then Merle spun and punched Shane in the face, and Shane didn't give a shit about that either. 

They went back down and to the trees, where Daryl picked up Nameless' trail with ease. Shane followed at their backs, hoping she'd circled around and would be waiting for them when they got back. She'd give them that smirk and ask what had taken him so fucking long. 

That's what would happen, he decided, and he was impatient to get back and see that sly, trouble-making grin. He would keep his hands to himself, but when he had a chance he'd take her aside and apologize for it all- the kiss, the walkers, everything- and she would- 

Daryl started a stream of brutal profanity and Merle added several graphic suggestions as they stepped into a clearing and saw the remains of a camp. 

 

 

Shane told the others he'd stay behind and protect the prison while they went to the meeting. He promised it easily and without any sign that he had no intentions of doing anything like that at fucking all. 

As soon as they left for the summit Andrea had promised she'd be brought to, Shane grabbed his shotgun and the pickup truck and went straight for Woodbury. He stashed the truck and hit the trees on foot when he got worried he wouldn't make it any closer, cutting as direct a path as he could manage. 

He didn't have a plan. Not really. He knew with the kind of certainty that had made him a decent deputy before the world ended that the Governor wouldn't bring her to the meeting like Andrea had promised. He knew without hesitation that she was in trouble and she needed his help, so here he was storming the place on his own to find her. 

Sometimes even Shane was surprised he was still alive. 

He stepped into a clearing and froze when he came face to face with her. 

She held a goddamn broken stick, the pointy end coated in blood. Her jacket and vest hung open and she wasn't wearing a shirt, and Shane's heart started pounding rapidly as he thought about what the Governor had done to Maggie. 

"Walsh? Am I- motherfucker, I've lost more blood than I thought. If you're a walker, go ahead and eat me. Frankly, I'm too tired to deal with this shit anymore," she declared in an exhausted deadpan as the stick fell from her hands.

Shane tossed his shotgun aside and scooped her into his arms, shaking as he knotted one hand in her hair and the other in the vest on her back. She made another smart ass comment while he was busy trying not start crying like a fucking idiot. 

He didn't realize how convinced he'd been that she would be hurt or impossible to reach or dead until she was warm in his arms and leaning into him. 

He pulled back to look her over and make sure she was ok, question forming about her semi-indecent state, when he noticed the blood dripping from her wrists. A smear of it stained his shirt, he discovered later, where she'd set a hand against his chest to steady herself. The bloodstain never came out, despite Carol's magic, and Shane shivered any time he wore it. 

He wrapped her wrists carefully after stripping off his flannel and getting her in it, using the remains of her own shirt to bind up her abused wrists. He couldn't bring himself to let go of her arm when he was finished, staring at the tree beyond her head as he wrestled with himself for control. 

He thought about tossing her over his shoulder and running far, far away from Governors and prisons and shit, to where she would be safe and fucking alive. 

He didn't do that, and her quiet voice asking him if he was ok had him snapping back into anger mode for a second. He lashed out, she responded with such obvious confusion that all the heat drained right back out of him. 

God, how long had it been since the woman had taken a rest? He caught her up on what he was doing out there alone, on what had happened when they got split up, and her fingers had feathered over the swelling and the bruise on his eye. 

He looked at her and gave a twisted smile. "Thought I'd lost you, criminal," he told her gently. 

She reached for his hand and he held on gratefully. 

 

 

She was practically asleep on her feet before they even made it back to the truck, and he acted annoyed with her to hide how his heart still pounded and he didn't want to take his eyes off her even enough to drive the damn truck. 

She was out before he'd put the thing in drive, muttering a whatever when he said he'd take the long way home. He didn't know if it was really necessary or not; he only knew he wasn't ready to be back there, with prying eyes and concerned voices. He needed some time, and she needed to sleep, and they both needed to be certain they wouldn't bring trouble back with them. 

She fell against his shoulder about five minutes in and Shane's heart clenched and his breath caught. He knew he was a fool, but he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. She made a tiny noise of protest at the movement, and he stroked his fingers over her cheek as she shifted a little against his shoulder. 

He tipped his head back on the seat as he drove one handed and tried not to wish it was anything more than what it was. He tried not to wish he could have her against his side like this every night, and he tried to ignore the way his heart settled and the rage that had been bubbling since she and Daryl had driven off on their rescue mission finally, finally, faded away under the weight and the warmth of her on him.


	13. If I Leave Here Tomorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence  
> mentions of drug use  
> character death

Dixon forgave him his stupidity, but only because she wasn't any worse for the wear, really, and there was too much other shit going on to get in a fight about it. Rick wanted to turn Michonne over to the Governor, on the off chance that the asshole would keep his word and leave them the fuck alone if they did. Shane had serious doubts about the man's reliability and about turning anyone over to him, but he saw Rick's point. 

He looked around their rag tag group and knew they didn't have enough fighters to compete, if the numbers Michonne talked about were correct. 

So he backed Rick's play, even when Nameless protested loudly, to the point of flat refusing to go along with it at all. 

That threw him, as did the way Dixon hung back, looked at both him and Rick, and told them quietly he was in. He didn't like it, but he was in. Daryl's eyes had gone worriedly to where she'd disappeared in a rage, and yeah, Shane got where the other man was coming from. 

Better anyone else than her. 

 

 

It lingered in his mind, though- the extent of her objections. He and Rick discussed other options, but Rick was standing firm in his decision. 

Shane went to Merle. If anyone could help him come up with a viable plan that didn't involve prisoners being traded, Shane figured it was the other criminal in the group. No matter how much he thought Merle was a waste of goddamn oxygen, he had the certain specialized skill set Shane was going to need for this. 

Shane found him in D block, mutilating mattresses on the second level. Shane stood in the doorway of a cell and looked at him. Man said he was clean, but Shane was a cop. He knew when someone was looking for drugs. 

"Lose something, Dixon?" Shane asked, crossing his arms and leaning in the door. 

Merle looked up and flashed Shane a grin that Shane could only describe as full-on asshole. It felt vaguely familiar to him, and he realized it looked like Nameless' bitch-mode smile. He couldn't help the slight chuckle that escaped him when he realized where she'd gotten so many of her mannerisms. She'd told him she'd had a serious case of hero-worship for Merle, and now that Shane knew her, he could see where Dixon the elder had rubbed off on her. 

"I'm just lookin' to see what I see, Shaney-boy," Merle said, waving his handless arm expansively at Shane. 

Shane snorted. "You mean you're looking to see what you can send up your nose." 

"Naw," Merle said, tone and face serious. "I made someone a promise. I ain't on that shit no more." 

"Sure," Shane muttered. "Whatever you say, Merle." 

"Ya come out here just to insult me or what, man?" 

Shane sighed and watched as Merle bent back to ripping the current mattress to shreds. "Actually, I want your opinion on something." 

"Why yes, I do believe all pigs are scum, Walsh," Merle fired back, shooting Shane that asshole grin and raising his eyebrows at him. 

Shane felt his jaw tightening as he ground his teeth together. "Thanks for that. God, you're a dick. Why the hell does she fight so hard for you?" 

Merle shrugged lazily and rose. "Hell if I know. Been tellin' her to leave me be for years." 

"Do you even know why you do what you do, man?" Shane asked wearily. Merle had exhausted him back at the quarry, and despite Nameless' protests to the contrary, Shane didn't see much difference between the man sober or high. Merle's lips quirked in an appreciative smirk as Shane continued. 

"Governor offered a deal to Rick. Turn Michonne over and he'll leave us alone." 

Merle's face turned into a thundercloud. "He thinkin' about trustin' that bastard? Man got less honor than me, and shit- I'm a criminal." 

Shane shrugged, keeping his face blank. Merle scoffed and moved closer to him, filling the doorway. Merle raised an eyebrow as he looked at Shane, swiping at his face with his remaining hand. 

"Aight, look. He's- he's a dangerous bastard. Brutal. We'd go out on runs. He'd bash somebody's skull in. Slash their throat. Never waste a bullet, he said. But I always thought it was just an excuse. He ain't gonna kill her, you know. He's just gonna- do things to her. Probably take out one of her eyes. Both of 'em most likely. Rick would let that happen for a shot?" 

Man's sneer could have cut glass, Shane thought, but it didn't move him like hers did. He saw where she got it, though. Shane shrugged again. "Rick thinks it's the right call." 

Merle seemed about as impressed with the idea as Nameless had. Shane was starting to wish he'd read the clubs damn bylaws back in the day, so he'd know just what it was about this concept that was so antithetical to the two of them. They were criminals who had no problem doing hard shit left and right. Shane had reminded Nameless that she'd left Otis and hadn't given a shit about that back in the day. 

She'd given him her you're-about-to-die look and a hard on he had some trouble hiding from both Rick and Daryl, and reminded him that she wasn't the last person to see Otis alive. Shane wondered just how fucked up his psyche was that her threatening him turned him on so damn badly.

But whatever it was that made them object so hard, Shane was rather glad to see it was both of them. Merle was studying him in a way that made Shane think Merle knew he was being tested. Finally Merle snorted and leaned against the cell door himself. 

"You'd need wire, not rope. Nothing she could chew through. Shit. You're right, Officer-"

"Don't call me officer," Shane snapped over him, jaw tight. 

Merle paused and gave him a bemused look. "Why the hell not? It's what my baby girl calls you." 

"I know," Shane said, trying to keep his voice flat. 

Merle scoffed again, shaking his head as he looked away. "Huh," he grunted, then looked Shane dead in the eyes. 

Shane frowned and started to speak, but Merle cut him off. 

"That's what I thought. You'd best leave that alone, Shane. She ain't available. Never seen a more damn symbiotic relationship than theirs, aight? So- you leave them be, or I'll handle it for 'em."

Merle fucking Dixon had just threatened him, Shane thought with faint surprise. He suddenly saw that protector she'd described Merle as. In the quarry, Merle had never been more than a nuisance at best and a liability at worst. Shane had heard Merle putting down his brother enough times that he hadn't believed the way Nameless talked about him. He damn well did now, he thought. 

But no way in hell was he going to respond to the damn threat. "What am I right about, Merle?" he asked firmly.

Fuck Shane if Merle's eyes didn't hold approval as he winked. "I don't know why I do the things I do. Never did. I'm a damn mystery to me."

Shane sighed and considered pounding his head into the wall, especially when he heard her voice come ringing from the stairs. She stomped up, all righteous fury and combat boots Shane knew for a fact had at least one hole. Woman wouldn't change her goddamn footwear out for anything, and when he'd bitched at her about it over the winter she'd patted his cheek and told him not to worry, she'd change them when she found some more that fit her aesthetic. 

Shane had asked Rick later what the hell 'aesthetic' meant. 

She took Shane's idea about as well as he had expected, calling him insane, cutting him off with every word, and then launching into a rant. Merle took pot shots at both of them until she suddenly paused, head tilting as she considered the idea for the first time. 

When it was safe, Shane started it up again. She bitched some more, but eventually the three of them worked out what they thought had a strong chance of working. She'd wanted to pick up Daryl- four was better than three after all- and Shane agreed, but Merle had told them no. Merle claimed they had to leave right then and quietly, or they'd get stopped in an argument and lose their window. 

He saw the way she eyed the rear view, saw her heart in her eyes along with a healthy smattering of guilt, and wished it didn't leave him with the bitter taste that lingered in his mouth as they drove. 

 

 

The Governor's men got her. 

Merle came out of the woods at Shane's side like a goddamn ghost, scaring the shit out of him and nearly getting himself shot. Merle delivered a shit ton of information in a soldier's voice, outlining a plan that had very little chance of succeeding. 

Unfortunately, Shane's own rapid analysis didn't give him any better ideas, and he scrambled to take care of his part as Merle faded back into the woods without a sound. 

Things went about as well as Shane had imagined they would, which was pretty much not well at all. He got the walkers in play, then started taking shots at the people surrounding her and the bastard who was using her as a shield. The walkers weren't exactly controllable, and Shane came through the buildings just in time for the walkers to hit the governor's men and to see the bastard himself sink a knife into Nameless' side. She screamed, kicked him in the damn head, and dropped down to slam her arm over the bastard's throat. 

Shane glanced at the chaos around and knew they didn't have time for that shit. There were more walkers than he'd thought, drawn in faster than he wanted to think about. 

He darted forward and grabbed her arm, hauling her away as she yelled at him about this being their chance. He yelled back that she was bleeding, and she glanced around the chaos, eyes taking everything in rapidly and widening with recognition of the precariousness of their situation here.

She shouted for Merle, who stabbed a walker with his missing hand-turned-sword and shot another with the other hand. Shane rolled his eyes at the redneck, still trying to pull her away. Then the shooting started up again, and he shoved her behind the nearest cover. Merle, who'd been coming behind them, ducked the other way, and Shane's eyes met his as the walkers came shambling between them. 

Merle nodded to Shane, gave Nameless a gentle smile Shane hadn't thought possible from the rough bastard, and headed right back the way they'd come, shooting as he went. 

Shane's eyes closed briefly against the image, even as he snatched at her. She was screaming Merle's name, trying to get out of Shane's arms and head back into the fray. Shane knew he was talking to her, trying to get her to understand that she needed to come with him; they had to go, now, damn it. 

"I'm sorry. YN, I'm sorry," he heard himself say, knowing every second he held her in place he damned himself to a lifetime of her hatred. He could let her go, he thought. He could let her go, run back into that mess at her side, and at least he wouldn't have to live with her despising him. 

But he couldn't live- or die- with her death. Not when he could save her damn life by dragging her away.

She reached down and ripped the knife from her own side, screaming in pain as she did, and Shane had the clear thought that she was one crazy, crazy bitch. 

"I'm not leaving, Shane! I'm not!" she sobbed, and Shane gritted his teeth as she kept struggling in his arms, her blood soaking into his shirt as he held her to his side. 

He only had one option, and he knew it. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he whispered, and brought the butt of his gun down on her head. 

She dropped like a stone, and Shane swept her up, tossed her over his shoulder, and ran for their car. 

He fought their way out, not slowing down until he was free of that goddamn nightmare. He wadded up his already blood-covered shirt and strapped it to her side, then dove into the driver's seat and floored it for the prison. 

He looked at her once on the way there, her face pale and slack, and whispered a goodbye in his mind. No matter what, even if Merle lived, Shane knew she'd never forgive him for leaving Merle behind. He'd never get her smile or hear her laugh or feel her touch again. She'd hate him, for certain- and there was a strong possibility she'd kill him herself. 

If Daryl didn't do it for her, Shane thought grimly. Shit. 

 

 

He grabbed her arm when she went striding toward the door, eyes blank and rifle on her back. She stopped moving, slowly looking down at his fingers wrapped around the leather on her sleeve and back up to him. 

"Get your goddamn hand off me," she whispered. 

Shane might have been anticipating that, but didn't make it feel any less like his heart was being carved out of his body with a spoon.


	14. All These Words I Just Don't Say, And Nothing Else Matters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cannon typical violence  
> character death (cannon)

He wouldn't beg her to understand. Shane told himself that as he walked slowly up the tower steps. He hadn't planned to go near her at all, but Rick had grabbed Shane's arm and practically shoved him in the direction of the guard tower. Shane had shaken his head and started to leave, and Rick had given him that glare- Nameless called it Rick's intense-friendly glare- and pointed to her shape against the sky, where she stood with the rifle glued to her eye and one foot hooked on the lower rung on the railing. 

So up Shane went, goddamn it. 

He wouldn't beg her, but he apparently he'd pick the worst possible time and way to tell her he loved her. He let her beat the shit out of him, taking the hit from the rifle and coming back for more like the glutton for fucking punishment he was. When she finally cracked and started talking to him, he was just moronic enough to be relieved. 

He took the beating when she started screaming at him, because he fucking knew the signs of someone who needed to let the anger out. And hell, maybe because he deserved it. Somewhere along the way, her giving him some lurid new bruises turned into Shane's arms being full of sobbing, devastated criminal, and Shane knew far less about what to do with that than he did the spitfire trying to kill him with her bare hands. 

He'd never seen her break like that, and he hoped to God he never would again. 

 

 

He found Daryl, told him Nameless had split her fucking side open again, and escaped without any more blows being exchanged. He figured it probably had something to do with the massive bruise on his jaw from where she'd cold-cocked him with the rifle. 

Damn that woman could deliver a hit, and he loved it. 

He left the prison just before dawn, since he might have been a fool but not enough of one to go at night. It wasn't the best decision he'd ever made, he found himself thinking as he had to fight his way through a couple small packs of walkers and sneak his way past a couple of the Governor's assholes keeping an eye on the roads. Then again, when it came to her, Shane was realizing few of his decisions ever had been. 

He never should have let her ride with him in his Jeep. He never should have opened up to her about Lori. He never should have poked at her until she opened up to him. He never should have sung the line of that damn Springsteen song, and he certainly never should have fucked her in the C.D.C. 

He never should have let her say it was only once. He never should have pushed her into Dixon's arms- he should have fought for her, damn it. 

As he pulled what used to be Merle down from the chains that asshole had left him in, Shane knew he wouldn't. At least, until this, he'd had a friend.

 

 

He got back to the prison later than he'd planned, and just in time to back her up during whatever bullshit Rick had cooked up while he was gone. Creeping around in the boiler block and leading walkers around wasn't his idea of a sound tactical approach, but they were outnumbered. Might as well get the dead fucks to work with them if they could. 

When they'd done their part and he was sure she was safe, he ducked away into the darkness to make sure this got ended once and for all. He'd invited her along, because of Merle, and she'd given him a scornful look and told him his last plan had gotten Merle killed. 

He couldn't argue with that, so here was Shane Walsh, love-struck idiot, and his shotgun, off to save the world. His world, at least. 

He wasn't expecting her to follow him, and he definitely wasn't expecting her to heave a sigh and head down the road like it was her damn idea in the first place. The surprises kept rolling as the Governor started mowing down all of his own people, and neither of them could get a clear shot at the monster. 

Nameless winged him, but of course the bastard got away, and Shane and Nameless looked at each other and the massacre down below. Shane wondered when the hell the world had come to this, and if it would ever be ok again.

 

 

Andrea was bit by the time they got there, and Shane didn't know how to deal with that fact. 

He'd messed things up with that woman, that's for sure. He'd used her shamelessly, and he wondered if she even knew it as she smiled and cracked a joke about riding off into the sunset together. Shane figured he owed her enough to joke right back, so he did. 

"Eh. We'd have never worked out anyway. Keep your head on straight. Watch out for these guys," she ordered him, leaning into the touch of his hand on her cheek. Shane swallowed down the lump in his throat as she looked up at Nameless and told her to watch out for him. 

Maybe she'd known after all. 

Nameless gave Andrea a gun when she asked for one and walked out, Dixon on her heels. Shane lingered with Rick and Michonne, until Andrea kicked him and Rick out. Michonne refused to go, and Shane was grateful someone would be with her, in the end. 

Nameless held her hand out to him as soon as she saw him, and Shane took it and held on. She'd told him she still tolerated him, and he was starting to believe her. Thank God. He didn't know what he'd do without her anymore. 

Probably go on a murder spree before taking out himself, he thought as he closed his eyes and waited for the shot. 

He snapped them right back open again when Daryl put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Shane met Dixon's eyes and got the nod of approval, and- 

Well, damn it. Shane didn't know what to do with that, but he was goddamn fucking grateful. But she wasn't Shane's. She was Dixon's, and Shane nodded back and let go of her hand. 

He wasn't going to get in their way. They were happy, and Merle had threatened him, after all. Shane didn't think even death would keep Merle from making good on that threat. 

He leaned against the wall near them, and felt her hand slide into his again. 

 

 

In the aftermath, he saw her starting to sneak out. He knew where she was going. He'd known she wouldn't be able to leave Merle for long, and her guilty face proved him right. 

In the truck, on the way there, he finally addressed the elephant in the room. 

"I know what I said. We don't need to talk about it, ok? I can deal. I will deal. But I meant it, sweetheart," he told her. He told her what he did, getting Merle down and making sure nothing could get to him. 

The look in her eyes broke his heart all over again, especially when she reached for him and said his name. 

He couldn't do this. He couldn't listen to her tell him she didn't love him. He already knew that, damn it. She was his friend, and he could deal with just being her friend. He didn't need to hear it from her. Not right now, maybe not ever. 

"No. Don't- we aren't talking about it, Nameless. Ok? I'm fine. Let's just go, before Dixon decides to kill me in my sleep so you won't keep runnin' around and getting into shit with me," he joked, and turned to stare out the window so she'd get the message. 

 

 

He arranged the funeral for her. She didn't think anyone but the two of them cared enough about Merle to mourn, and maybe that was true. Shane certainly didn't. 

The thing was, they cared about her and about Daryl. From the tears that sprang into her eyes and the way both of them practically fled when it was over, Shane had been right. He was the last one left there in the little graveyard, staring at the crosses as everyone else dispersed. 

"Look, man. I didn't like you much. No point in trying to hide that," he told Merle's grave. "I'd have died in your place. I hope you know that. For her, I'd do anything. Even leave her alone and let her be happy."


	15. Gonna Let It Rock, Let It Roll

Somehow, Shane got suckered into being on Rick's stupid Council. He was still scratching his head over how that one had happened as he fed Judith a bottle and nodded to various things that needed doing while giving out job assignments for the day. Maggie, standing nearby, was smirking at him as he did, and Shane rolled his eyes at her. 

He passed his daughter off to Beth when she had eaten, ready to head down to the fences and get started on walker removal. He was halfway to the bucket of guns when Carol called his name from the outdoor kitchen he and Rick had built for her with their own two hands. 

He glanced over and felt himself smile. A few long steps and he and Daryl were slapping each other's backs. "Welcome home, man." 

Dixon nodded. "Thanks. The fuck's up with that north corner, asshole? Cain't ya keep that shit under control?" 

"Shit. You've been back how long?" Shane muttered, shooting Daryl a glare. The redneck's face didn't change, but Shane caught the laughter in his eyes and rolled his own. "Screw you, Dixon." 

"Not really my type, Walsh," Daryl muttered, crossing his arms with a tiny smirk as he leaned against the kitchen. 

"He does have a point, Shane," Carol put in, dishing up two plates and passing one to Daryl and one to Shane. Shane ate absently, realizing he hadn't done that yet today. Carol continued, waving her knife in the general direction of the fences. "They keep building up there. We need to figure it out." 

"I already got a crew headed that way. I put Tyreese on it this morning. Rest easy, Dixon; I can manage this place without you," Shane said, passing his empty plate back to Carol. 

Daryl snorted. "Anything major going on?" 

"Naw. Might wanna check in with Hershel. Check out his new toy," Shane said with a grin. 

Daryl nodded and jerked his head toward the field. "She's down there already. Go say hey." 

Shane clapped Daryl's shoulder again as he set out down to the field. "Glad you're back, Dixon! We need more venison!" 

"Fuck off, Shane!" Daryl yelled back, and Shane was grinning as he made his way into the field. 

He could see her down there, standing in front of Lori's grave, fingertips brushing the cross absently. As he walked closer, she moved on, stopping at each cross to speak a few words to them, before ending at Merle's. 

Shane waved off a few people hailing him, pointing toward the graveyard, and tried to ignore the knowing looks he got in return. 

There were more people around than ever, now. Several of them unattached women around his age. Several of those women engaged in some serious flirting. Shane liked women, enjoyed their company and enjoyed a good flirt, so he flirted back. 

Those women became increasingly frustrated when it never went any further than that. One had tried cornering him in the showers one night, and Shane had gently but firmly refused the offer and sent her right back out again. He didn't mention it to anyone but Rick, in a frustrated venting session outside the gates one day. Rick had shrugged and asked him why he didn't go for it. 

Shane had given him a look, a roll of his eyes, and a joke to shuck it off, but Rick had seen right through that shit. 

"Hung up on her, huh?" he asked. 

Shane glared, Rick held up his hands for peace, and conversation turned to the sole lady in both their lives. Judith had, miraculously, cemented their fractured friendship back into place, and Shane was happier than he'd ever been in nearly all ways. Certainly, he decided, in every way that really mattered. 

He'd learned his lesson with Andrea, and while maybe he missed having a woman in his arms and his bed, it wasn't worth it. Not really. Sex was great; Shane would never argue that. Shane just didn't like being the kind of asshole who pretended the woman he was with was someone else, and he wasn't interested in anyone here but her. 

She stood up, fingers dropping from the wooden cross as she did. Shane ran a critical eye over the graves, pleased they were looking maintained. He had a thumb in every goddamn pie in this place, it felt like, and he was frankly surprised he hadn't managed to forget anything yet. Her shoulders slumped as she looked down at Merle's grave for a moment longer, and then she turned. 

As soon as she saw him, that million-watt smile bloomed and she headed his way. 

 

 

She told him she was going out on her own, and he didn't like it. Talking to Dixon the next day, he muttered that he didn't like it either. 

"Cain't change her damn mind, though. She's goin', no matter what," Daryl said, jerking one shoulder like it didn't matter. Shane saw right through that shit. 

"Could go with her," he offered. 

Daryl sighed. "I would. Won't solve the problem. She's gotta go it alone, at least once. And I got responsibilities here, man. All these damn people need to eat. Walkers need to be kept off the fuckin' fences. Shit to do."   
"Yeah. I won't lie, Dixon, it'll be good to have the help," Shane confessed seriously. "But her, out there alone?" 

Daryl scoffed, meeting Shane's worried look with his own. "Don't I know it, man. She's tough, though." 

"Yeah, she is." 

 

 

She left them behind with a peace sign and a promise she'd be back in a week. Shane reached for Daryl's shoulder as they watched her drive off, and Daryl touched his arm in appreciation as he turned and trudged toward the cell blocks. Shane shoved a hand through his hair, realized he needed a goddamn haircut, and resigned himself to a week of very little sleep. 

 

 

The day after she was supposed to be back, they were pissed. Daryl was glaring and pacing the guard tower like a caged tiger, and Shane stood with a death grip on the rail and one foot propped on the lower rung, trying not to let how worried he was already show. 

Two days after she was supposed to be back, Shane snapped at Beth and made her cry. 

Four days after she was supposed to be back, Daryl growled to Shane that he'd be back soon and headed out the door with his crossbow and a face that promised anyone he met would probably bleed. 

Five days after she was supposed to be back, Shane stopped talking to anyone he didn't have to. 

A week after, Rick came to the guard tower and told Shane if he didn't get some fucking sleep, Rick would knock Shane out and personally carry him back into the prison. Shane scoffed and ignored him, and Rick clocked him on the jaw twice in rapid succession. Shane woke up sometime in the afternoon on the eighth day after she was supposed to come back with a screaming headache and a lovely shade of blue-green on his jaw. 

The ninth day, Daryl walked into the prison covered in blood, took a shower, grabbed the bag Shane repacked for him while he was in there and held out to him at the gate without a word, and walked right back out again. 

The tenth day, Shane decided she was dead. He couldn't take this shit any more. He grabbed a bottle of booze Glenn had brought back from a supply run, went down into the boiler block, and got shitfaced drunk.

Morning on the eleventh day, after he puked for awhile, stumbled out of the shower, and scarfed down whatever Carol had shoved into his hands with a sympathetic look, Shane trudged right back up into the guard tower to keep looking for her. 

Headlights beamed up the road as a familiar rumble cut the silence sometime in the early morning hours, and Shane's heart stopped beating even as he tried to keep a lid down on the wild hope springing up inside him. 

"You forget who I am already, along with how to keep zombies off the damn fence?"

Shane was going to kill her, he decided. After he made sure she was ok.

 

 

He sat just outside her cell until morning light broke and people began moving around. Daryl was due back that morning, and Shane climbed slowly and painfully to his feet. Not sleeping for days at a time and spending hours sitting on cold, hard stone was reminding Shane that he wasn't a twenty-year-old kid anymore, damn it. 

That and he'd aged about a hundred years in the past eleven days. 

Daryl slammed open the door to C block sometime around mid-morning, coming through with a face like a thundercloud. Shane held up a hand and stepped into his path, blocking him from striding right into the cell block and beginning the yelling Shane had had exactly zero luck with the night before. 

Dixon's eyes narrowed at Shane, but he stopped moving. It was a testament to the friendship that had grown between the two of them. Just a few months ago, if Shane had tried something like this, he'd have gotten shot. 

"She's in there," Shane said with a jerk of his head in the cell direction. "You should wait a bit, though." 

Daryl's snort conveyed his rejection of that idea quite clearly. "Twelve fuckin' days, Walsh! Move ya ass!" he half-yelled. 

Shane tried again, shoving his hand wearily through his hair. "Yeah, I know. She's only been asleep a couple hours, man. Look, she's fine. Got some decent road rash and a healthy dose of sleep deprivation, but what else is new? Give her a couple more hours and then yell at her. Maybe you'll have more luck than I did."

Daryl paused. "She wreck out?" 

Shane shrugged. "Said she did. Just scrapes, though I dug some gravel out of her back that might have caused some problems if she'd been any later." 

"Imma kill her," Daryl muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. "She say where the fuck she's been? Damn girl, two fuckin' weeks late and comes home in the middle of the goddamn night and-" 

Shane snorted. "And says some bullshit about us forgetting who she was and starts bitching about the walkers. First thing she says, then gets through the gate and just says 'hey'." 

Daryl growled and tossed his hands up in disgust. "Fuckin' bitch. Put us through goddamn hell and says-" 

"Hey, babe. I'm home." 

Shit, he loved her, Shane thought helplessly as she appeared in the doorway. Damn it. 

 

 

She walked between the two of them down toward the fences, chattering at them both about staying here and what she wanted to do. Places nearby that she wanted to check out and clear, things she thought could be improved. 

She flashed a smirk at both of them as she said there'd been a music store about two days out that she wanted to go back to. 

"Fuckin' why?" Daryl muttered. 

"Because! Rock and roll, Dixon! That's why!" she declared with a laugh. 

Shane couldn't stop smiling at her. "You just got back, criminal. Slow the fuck down for a few days, would you?" 

"Can't," she said with a grunt as she stabbed a crowbar through the fence into a walker's eye. "Besides, you should talk. Don't you have a hand in every damn thing going on here?" 

Shane shook his head and stabbed through the fence himself as he eyed her. "Maybe." 

She lifted that eyebrow at him. "Saw a Springsteen album in there. I get a record player, we can prove once and for all who's better, Springsteen or Petty. Zepplin or Skynard- though that one's goddamn clear as mud, and how the fuck you can argue it is beyond me. We get lucky, we can clear up your misconception about classic rock being better than hard rock." 

Shane pointed at her with one hand, both of them stopping what they were doing to face each other and argue. "It ain't a misconception. Hard rock's great, but you can't beat music you can sing to." 

"You can sing Motorhead! I'll prove it!" she shot back, and Shane groaned. 

"Hey! Both of ya, get the fuck to work!" Daryl growled over them as Shane protested and she started belting out some song Shane only vaguely recognized because of her. They grinned at each other and turned back to the walkers. 

Daryl eyed them a minute longer, shaking his head. "Beginning to see what the damn problem is here. Shit." 

"Aww, you love my singing, Dixon," she shot back, and Daryl rolled his eyes. She grinned and stabbed at another walker, then glanced at Shane. "Fine! If I pick something the officer likes, you guys can sing along with me. I need a backup chorus anyway." 

She launched into "Jack and Diane" even as Shane and Daryl refused to participate. She went over them, cracking them both up as she made a suggestive motion at 'let me do what I please'. Daryl and Shane glanced at each other, and in unspoken agreement wailed out the chorus with her until she laughed. 

"Oh yeah, life goes on! Long after the thrill of livin' is gone!"


	16. The Playlist

You may notice a shift in the tone of the playlist with this one if you decide to give it a listen. Nameless is hard rock all the way, but Shane is smooth classic rock. I could go into music theory and the reasons behind my choices, but just roll with it. 

Or rather, rock with it. 

 

 

Born to Run- Bruce Springsteen

Free Fallin'- Tom Petty

Take It Easy- The Eagles (personal favorite cover: Jason Manns featuring Gil McKinney, though I used the Eagles on my playlist)

For Real- Tom Petty

Gypsy- Fleetwood Mac

Have You Ever Seen the Rain- Creedence Clearwater Revival

Against the Wind- Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

Dancing in the Dark- Bruce Springsteen

Gold Dust Woman- Fleetwood Mac

Desperado- The Eagles

I'm On Fire- Bruce Springsteen

Beautiful Loser- Bob Seger

Free Bird- Lynyrd Skynyrd

Nothing Else Matters- Metallica

Jack & Diane- John Mellencamp


End file.
